6o MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNI'I'IIOLOGICAL CLUB. 



as the Flicker, Meadowlark, Purple Finch, Song Sparrow, Cedarbird and Robin, 

 the Cambridge Region attracts decidedly more than an average share, at least as 

 compared with localities of similar character and extent lying further inland in 

 the same latitude. Within recent years, moreover, the Red-winged Blackbird, 

 White-throated Sparrow, Swamp Sparrow, and Long-billed Marsh Wren — spe- 

 cies which apparently leave most other parts of southern New England before 

 the advent of cold weather — have been found repeatedly in midwinter in or 

 near the Fresh Pond Swamps. 



There are occasional winters, however, when the Cambridge Region — as 

 well as eastern Massachusetts generally — is practically barren of bird life. 

 According to my personal experience this is quite as likely to happen during 

 unusually mild as exceptionally severe seasons. The weather, indeed, has appar- 

 ently little to do with the matter, the condition of the food supply being obvi- 

 ously the chief if not sole determining factor. Whenever our cedar woods and 

 groves are well supplied with berries they are sure to be frequented — at least 

 soon after the close of January — by great numbers of Cedarbirds and Robins. 

 Pine Grosbeaks and Purple Finches are also very fond of these berries, and I 

 have known Quail to subsist on them for weeks at a time when the ground has 

 been deeply covered with snow. The crop of weed seeds was once of great 

 importance to most of our native fringilline birds, but in the neighborhood of 

 towns and cities, as well as about many of the outlying farms, it is now garnered 

 by the House Sparrows before the northern-breeding Finches, such as the Snow 

 Bunting, Tree Sparrow and J unco, arrive. It is chiefly for this reason, I 

 believe, that these birds winter with us less numerously than formerly, and for 

 the same reason, no doubt, the Cambridge Region is becoming less and less 

 attractive to the hordes of Tree Sparrows, J uncos. Song Sparrows, and Fox 

 Sparrows which traverse it on their way northward in early spring and during 

 the return journey in late autumn. 



Owing partly, without doubt, to its proximity to the seacoast, but perhaps 

 even more largely to its generous supply of ponds, rivers, and marshes, the east- 

 ern extremity of the Cambridge Region attracts a considerable number and vari- 

 ety of wading and swimming birds. Most of them belong to species which have 

 either little or no liking for the sea — such as the Pied-billed Grebe, Goosander, 

 the Hooded Merganser, the surface-feeding Ducks (exclusive of the Black Duck), 

 the Ruddy Duck, Mud-hen, Wilson's Snipe, and Solitary Sandpiper, — or which 

 are more or less equally at home in or about both salt and fresh water — as the 

 Horned Grebe, Loon, Black Duck, I^esser Scaup, Whistler, Buffle-head, Old- 

 squaw, the thr(;e species of Scoters, the Spotted Sand|)iper, and several of the 

 northern-breeding Sandpipers and Plover. Of the sea birds and waders which 

 are exclusively maritime by choice, and seldom seen inland at any season, our 



