Henslow's Sparrow as an Ohio Bird

Abstract

AUDUBON took this sparrow at Newport, Kentucky, opposite Cincinnati, and states: is accidental in It was not taken in Ohio for years and Audubon's statement was considered an error. But time has shown him to have been correct in this statement as in many other instances, where others failed and the sharp-eyed master succeeded. Dr. Wheaton, in 1882, included this bird in his Ohio List on this statement of Audubon. Neither he nor Oliver Davie knew anything of this species as an Ohio bird. Their opinion that it would be found in southern and western Ohio as a breeder has never been proved. In the meantime Jones and Dawson were working up the northern part of the State and took a specimen in 1894 near Oberlin in Lorain County, and Dawson in his book 'Birds of Ohio,' follows it up with the remark: they undoubtedly bred there. On September 25, 1906, I met two migrating Henslow's Sparrows (Wilson Bull., Dec., 1906, p. 136) near Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio. In 1907 and 1908, Mr. E. W. Vickers of Ellsworth Station and Geo. L. Fordyce of Youngstown recorded an invasion of this sparrow in Mahoning County, Ohio (Wilson Bull., Sept., 1908, pp. 150-152). To these records I now add two more. On October 8, 1894, I took what I thought to be a specimen of this bird at South Webster, Scioto County, migrating with other sparrows, and as I knew the species in my home State (Missouri) I was about sure of the identification. Unfortunately I lost the specimen and consequently never reported anything about it as my hypothetical list of Southern Ohio Birds (Wilson Bull., Sept., 1902) was already too large. In 1904, I took a nest and 4 eggs of this species near Tiffin, Seneca County, and have kept this note back since then, partly because I wanted more evidence and a still better confirmation of my record before rushing into print, and partly because I had packed the eggs away where I could not conveniently get at them. Recently when