Page:Condor16(3).djvu/22

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120 TIlE CONDOR Vol. XVI Being situated here at a watering place, we Santa Barbarans are perhaps in a position to realize clearly what recent zoonomers have evidently overlooked; viz., that this third class has arisen in human society, and that it has received its designation. Hereabouts we have two or three scores of families, each of which owns two homes, one in Santa Barbara, and the other in Chicago or New York or Boston, as the case may be. These spend habitually from three to six of the winter months with us, and we call them winter residents. Similarly a few families resident in Pasadena or Bakersfield, or Fresno, or elsewhere in the heated interior, maintain separate establishments on the coast, to which they resort for two or three months in summer, and we call such summer resi- dents. Winter visitors we have also, of course, shoals of. them, spending a .week or two at the Potter, or a month with friends in Montecito,---here today and gone tomorrow; Santa Barbara this year and Ceylon the next. It is a travesty on current usage to call the Gambel Sparrow, which spends five or six months with us, a "winter visitant", and to place him thereby in the same category with the Pacific Fulmar and Baird COrmorant and Glaucous Gull, which are occasionally seen in winter; or with the Blue-fronted Jay, which pays us strict visits. And it is grossly inappropriate to call any breed- ing bird a "visitant" in its breeding home. Imperfect our human terms may be, but let us minimize' their imperfection rather than parade our griefs and invite the scorn of those who speak a living language. The terms "summer. resident" and "winter resident" are, in my opinion, much more accurate than the proposed substitutes, and they assuredly do conform to current usage. Santa Barbara, California, January $, I914. A CHANGE IN FAUNA By FAYRE KENAGY HE CHANGES in faunas so rapidly dereloping in certain regions in the west, have a peculiar interest for me. They take place with especial rapidity on irrigation projects, as the result of altered conditions, and desert surroundings are often completely changed in two or three years. The locality I have been especially interested in is the 3/finidoka project, in south- ern Idaho, containing about eighty thousand acres and bisected by the Snake River. This last feature makes it doubly interesting, as affording contrast between the changes in the uplands and those al.ong the stream. As there is so great a difference between the two I will mention each separately. I came to this region in 1907, before the water was turned into the canals, and have resided here permanently since. Thus I have had an excellent oppor- tunity to note the changes which have taken place. The country was origin- ally sandy, and heavily covered with sage-brush. There were fewer than fif- teen summer residents, the river belt excluded, nearly all of them .typical of a dry r?.gion. Sage Grouse, Sage Thrasher, Burrowing Owl, Rough-legged Hawk, Prairie Falcon, Dusky Horned Lark, and Sage Sparrow were by far the most common. As the farmers cleared their land, the Grouse, Sage Thrasher, 'and Sage Sparrow were deprived of their natural haunts. The Grouse be- came rare; the Sparrow and Thrasher are now found on the edges of the pro- ject, and on state land that has remained uncleared. But this is not the case