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far as I know, Martin history at Cape May would come to a close early in 

 August when the Inst of the fledglings become self dependent and sail away 

 with their parents. But as it is, though there may be many days In August 

 when practically no martins are to be found for miles around Cape May from 

 sunrise to sunset, they will gather in ever increasing numbers to pass the night 

 in this small grove which, so far as our eyes can detect, offers no advantages 

 over hundreds of similar groves past which the birds must have flown. It 

 would seem that most of these Martins must have come from areas far to the 

 north of New Jersey, as the local breeding Martins could not have yielded such 

 a crop of young. I estimate that there are not more than fifty pairs of the 

 birds in Cape May and perhaps twice that number elsewhere in the peninsula 

 and these hundred and fifty paii's could not produce more than six hundred 

 offspring, making some nine hundred Martins in all, and yet at least 15,000 of 

 the birds come to Cape May every night to roost. In the New York area, including 

 northern New Jersey, Ludlow Griscom states that the Martin colonies are very 

 locally distributed and that the birds are rare as transients, which further com- 

 plicates the question of where our Martins come from ! Another fact of interest 

 is that on July 23, 1926, before any of the young had left the Cape May nesting 

 boxes one thousand Martins had already assembled at the roost. 



Later in Stone's account of this same roost he says that while the 

 birds gather together and settle on the twigs of the trees for the 

 night, "their calls produced a constant twittering like escaping steam, 

 now swelling loudly and then dying away again." The italics are 

 mine, this being the third author to refer to escaping steam ! 



Voice. — Though unable to lay any claim to being a musician, and 

 therefore incompetent to judge music, I cannot but feel some slight 

 resentment toward writers who characterize the voice of the martin 

 as "unmusical"! True, some of the notes are such, but there are 

 many others that are decidedly pleasing. All writers seem to agree 

 that on the whole the vocal efforts of the species are "pleasing," 

 which, in itself, denotes that they are musical rather than otherwise. 



Certainly, they are pleasing. This fact has undoubtedly a great 

 deal to do with the attraction of a martin colony about one's home. 

 People generally enjoy hearing them. The bird has no specific 

 "song," such as many species possess, but the varied medley of notes 

 has a definite quality of imparting satisfaction and enjoyment to 

 human ears. 



The outstanding impression always left upon me is that of content- 

 ment. In few birds is this so typified. The gurgling chatter of a 

 group about its nesting box gives one the complete assurance that, 

 so far as the martins are concerned, "all's well with the world"! 

 There is a restfulness about the notes that is distinctly relaxing; they 

 can be listened to at a time when a person is reclining on a porch in 

 an easy chair in springtime and fit perfectly with the droning of 

 bees about a flowering vine, the sighing of a breeze through moss- 

 hung oaks, and the distant calling of willets over the salt marshes. 



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