[Transcriber’s Note: This text includes characters that require Unicode (UTF-8) file encoding: œ Œ (oe ligature) α β γ (Greek letters) ā ē ī ū è é ĕ ŏ ö (letters with macron, accent, breve, or umlaut) ° ′ ″ (degrees, minutes, seconds) ♂ ♀ (male and female symbols) If any of these characters do not display properly—in particular, if the diacritic does not appear directly above the letter—or if the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, make sure your text reader’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font. Additional notes are at the end of the book.] NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS LAND BIRDS VOL. I. [Illustration: CAT BIRD. (Galeoscoptes carolinensis.) Adult.] A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS BY S. F. BAIRD, T. M. BREWER, AND R. RIDGWAY LAND BIRDS _ILLUSTRATED BY 64 PLATES AND 593 WOODCUTS_ VOLUME I. [Illustration: sketch of nest with eggs] BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1905 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. PREFACE. The present work is designed to meet the want, which has long been felt, of a descriptive account of the Birds of North America, with notices of their geographical distribution, habits, methods of nesting, character of eggs, their popular nomenclature, and other points connected with their life history. For many years past the only systematic treatises bearing upon this subject have been “The American Ornithology” of Alexander Wilson, finished by that author in 1814, and brought down to the date of 1827 by George Ord; the “Ornithological Biography” of Audubon, bearing date of 1838, with a second edition, “Birds of America,” embracing a little more of detail, and completed in 1844; and “A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada,” by Nuttall, of which a first edition was published in 1832 and a second in 1840. Since then no work relating to American Ornithology, of a biographical nature, has been presented to the public, with the exception of some of limited extent, such as those of Giraud, on the “Birds of Long Island,” in 1844; De Kay’s “Birds of New York,” 1844; Samuels’s “Ornithology and Oölogy of New England,” 1868, and a few others; together with quite a number of minor papers on the birds of particular localities, of greater or less moment, chiefly published in periodicals and the Proceedings of Societies. The reports of many of the government exploring parties also contain valuable data, especially those of Dr. Newberry, Dr. Heermann, Dr. J. G. Cooper, Dr. Suckley, Dr. Kennerly, and others.