DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. i 



and Great-crested Flycatchers joined the chorus that tlius be- 

 came something very different from our Robin chorus in sub- 

 urban Philadelpliia, although this was partially Robin song, 

 for there were many Robins at Buck Hill too. Red-eyes were 

 about in plenty, and I had not been long about in the morning 

 when I heard Barn-Swallows going over and saw two Swifts 

 hurtling by. Swifts were rare birds hereabouts, however, as 

 they were everywhere I ■went within a radius of ten miles. 

 During this first day I made acquaintance for the first time 

 with the Blue-headed Vireo, which I soon got to know as one of 

 our most ecstatic and delicious singers — the books have failed 

 to do him justice. Most of the many Wood Thrushes of the 

 neighborhood lived far down tlie mountain side, but I heard 

 them singing in the distance, and on the evening of our second 

 day a Hermit Thrush came close by and sang in calm raptures 

 at intervals for half an hour while the twilight deepened into 

 night. Before many daj's were over I had found nests of 

 Flickers and Indigo Buntings and Cedarbirds and Tanagers on 

 the mountain-top, where, too, were Catbirds and Chewinks * and 

 Chipping Sparrows, these latter chiefly in the brush where the 

 forest had been cut oS to afford a view out over the country. 



Looking out from the mountain-top I could see that this 

 Canadensis country — as the natives call the lands of the upper 

 tributaries of Broadhead's Creek — is a great half-bowl scooped 

 back into the Pocono plateau, southwest and west and north- 

 west and north, with little timber of any size on it, except to 

 northward, but with second growth or scrub almost everywhere. 

 A higher point, the lookout on the very top of Buck Hill, a 

 half-mile from our shack, overlooks most of the country I 

 walked over, and in several directions, miles further than I 

 walked. From this point yon look upward along the rising 

 sides of the half-bowl over unbroken woodland as far as the eye 

 can reach. It is sombre and desolate, this unbroken greenness, 

 with something in it both of the freedom and menace of the sea. 

 For about three miles westward it is growth like that on Buck 

 Hill, rock-oak and chestnut and hickory, grown up since the 



* Pipilo eri/throphfhalnnts. 



