THE OOLOOIST 



123 



tal fork about three feet from the 

 trunk, and was unlike any nest which 

 had ever come under my observation. 

 I was up to it in a hurry and on look- 

 ing in found the nest to contain one 

 blue egg and one egg of the Dwarf 

 Cowbird. The nest was composed of 

 grasses, weed stems, inner fibre of 

 Spanish moss, and fine rootlets, and 

 shaped into a very neat bowl, molded 

 thickly Willi mud. No mud showed 

 outside, l)ut inside was as smooth as 

 a piece of pottery, as if it had been 

 rounded by hand. Into this had been 

 placed a lining of fine rootlfets and 

 grass stems. The sides of the nest 

 were almost perpendicular to the bot- 

 tom, and exactly like nests of the Boat- 

 tailed Grackle which have come un- 

 der my observation. It was 2% inches 

 in depth externally, 2 inches in depth 

 inside, 4% inches in diameter exter- 

 nally and measured 3i/4 inches across 

 the opening. 



On May 6, when I again visited the 

 locality, I found both eggs thrown out 

 on the ground beneath the nest and 

 broken. 



On the first day the birds did not 

 appear until I was leaving, but on 

 the second day's visit they were si- 

 lently watching from a neighboring 

 tree, uttering no sound. The nest was 

 visited several times more but no 

 eggs had been laid so the nest itself 

 was collected. 



Finlay Simmons. 

 Houston, Texas. 



Summer Residents of the Pensauken 

 Creek, New Jersey. 

 By Richard F. Miller. 

 The Pensauken Creek is a two- 

 branched tide-water tributary of the 

 Delaware River in the southwestern 

 part of New Jersey, and forms the 

 boundary line between Camden and 

 Burlington Counties; both branches 

 rise near the little hamlet of Eves- 



boro, in Burlington County, and slug- 

 gishly wend their tortuous way north- 

 erly for some eight or nine miles, 

 uniting at Fork's Landing, where the 

 main creek flow its serpentine course 

 of about five miles in a westerly direc- 

 tion and empties into the river just 

 below Palmyra, about six miles above 

 Camden City. 



It is navigable for seven or eight 

 miles by small boats, but is slowly be- 

 coming shallower, especially the up- 

 per branches, where the streams are 

 almost choked in places by rank 

 growths of adequate vegetation which 

 render navigation impossible except 

 by canoes and similar crafts. 



There are no extensive patches of 

 woodland along the creek, but belts 

 of trees occur irregularly on the 

 banks and consists mostly of oaks of 

 several varieties, the scarlet and 

 chestnut oaks being the commonest 

 kinds, ash, beech, chestnut, black gum, 

 hackberry, buttonwood, Jersey pine, 

 red apple, etc.; thickets of alder, but- 

 tonbush, sweet pepperbush, willow 

 and arrow-wood abound in places and 

 dense tangles cf wild grape vines, 

 greenbrier, poison ivy and creeper 

 vines run riot everywhere. Di- 

 rectly back from the streams and ex- 

 tending in many places clear down to 

 the water edge, are cultivated fields 

 and orchards of apple and pear. On 

 these farms are many groves and 

 woodlots, and in one of these woods 

 not far from the creek there is a crow 

 roost which is used annually by 

 thousands of crows, and another 

 grove harbors a small heronry of the 

 Black-crowned Night Heron, or 

 Squawk, as it is locally called. 



The upper branches are the wildest 

 and less frequented and marshes oc- 

 cur abundantly along the creek and 

 consist of patches and contiguous 

 growths of wild rice (locally called 

 Reed), calamus and cat-tails and other 



