Summer Birds of Milford, Pike County, Pa. 



BY E. SEYMOUR WOODRUFF 



The following list is made up from my notes of a number of 

 excursions — mostly short ones — taken between the dates of July 

 8 and September 9, 1905, inclusive, while I was at the sum- 

 mer camp of the Yale Forest School, near Milford, Pike county, 

 Pennsylvania. The list is not as complete as it might have been 

 had I had more time at my disposal, for there were several 

 localities in the near neighborhood where a more exhaustive 

 search than I was able to make would probably have yielded up 

 more species of birds. 



Milford lies on the west bank of the Delaware river, eight 

 miles southwest of the point at which meet the boundaries of 

 the three states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and 

 has an altitude of about 500 feet above sea level. The valley of 

 the Delaware on the Pennsylvania side of the river is a sand and 

 gravel flood-plain averaging about a half-mile in width. To the 

 west of this the land rises suddenly, in some places precipi- 

 touslj', reaching an altitude of from 1,000 to 1,200 feet, and is 

 deeply dissected by numerous valleys containing beautiful little 

 streams, often rushing and tumbling in a series of cascades and 

 falls through deep and narrow ravines till they reach the valley 

 of the Delaware below. The largest of these is the Sawkill. 



In spite of these numerous valleys, the general impression one 

 gets from a view from any high point is that it is a compara- 

 tively level country, for the tops of all the hills are at about the 

 same height, none breaking the level line of the horizon. 



The soil is nothing but more or less (mostly less) disinte- 

 grated shale, so dry and infertile in spite of numerous springs 

 as to be almost worthless for agricultural purposes, the only pro- 

 duct that can be raised with any fair profit being buckwheat. 

 The result is that the country is still thickly wooded with very 



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