576 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The Pennsylvania evidence is equally suggestive, J. Fletcher Street 

 (1918) found a pair of these chickadees at Pocono Lake on June 17, 

 1917. "The location was at the edge of a sphagnum swamp amid a 

 dense grove of dwarf spruces. When discovered the birds evidenced 

 considerable excitement and came and scolded within three feet of me." 



Regarding the other Pennsylvania record, Thomas D. Burleigh (1918) 

 writes : 



In company with Richard C. Harlow, Richard F. Miller and Albert D. McGrew, 

 I spent three weeks in the field in the spring of 1917 about La Anna, Pike County, 

 Pa., and June 3, while searching a large sphagnum bog for a nest of the elusive 

 Northern Water-Thrush, two brown-capped chickadees were seen. * * * They 

 showed a preference for a certain part of the bog that we had been floundering 

 through but although several suspicious looking holes were found, we could de- 

 tect no signs of their nesting. I returned to the spot the next day, and had no 

 difficulty in finding the birds again. This time I spent two hours trailing them 

 but with no success other than leaving with the conviction that they were mated 

 and if not as yet nesting here, would undoubtedly do so. Not satisfied, however, 

 all of us returned the following day and made another attempt but with no more 

 luck though we again found them at the same place. * * * The situation in which 

 they were found was typical of that much farther north, being indeed a northern 

 muskeg in every sense of the word, with lichen covered tamarack, deep beds of 

 sphagntim moss and scattered pools." 



The localities in which these birds were found in Pennsylvania would 

 match almost exactly the favorite haunts of the species in the north 

 woods of Canada, coniferous forests of spruces, firs, cedars, pines, 

 and larches, especially in the vicinity of peat bogs and muskegs, some- 

 times mixed with a few small paper birches and mountain-ashes, with a 

 ground cover of sphagnum moss, Labrador tea. and other northern 

 plants. 



The only place where I have ever found the Acadian chickadee really 

 common was on Seal Island, Nova Scotia. This island is situated 

 about 15 miles off the southwest coast and is about 4 miles long; it is 

 divided in the middle by a low stretch of sandy beach and marsh, from 

 which the land rises at both ends and is heavily wooded with a dense 

 forest of small spruces and firs, sometimes growing so closely together 

 as to be nearly impenetrable. These forests, nourished by the fog banks 

 that envelop that coast almost constantly, were rich and luxuriant, thickly 

 carpeted with soft mosses and ferns, the fallen trees, as well as the 

 trunks and branches of the standing trees, supporting a flourishing 

 growth of various mosses and lichens. In these dense and shady re- 

 treats, where the trees were often dripping with moisture, were the 

 favorite haunts of Bicknell's thrushes and Acadian chickadees, the two 

 most conspicuous birds. It was the first week in July and the young 



