DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. y 



ing had brought back a country outing in Chester County a 

 quarter-century back. Now I knew why, for the Killdeers were 

 always whechng and crying about those upper reaches of Pick- 

 ering Creek. In train of these memories came others of delight- 

 ful wanderings in later years, and always in unfamiliar fields, 

 since my Wissahiekon Hills have not in my time been Killdeer 

 country. The bird's wild crying and wilder flight, the weird- 

 gray glare, the thoughts of long ago, combined to move me 

 strangely, so that I am sure I shall not soon forget that scene — 

 the straight road of yellow gravel, past the dyked pond and low 

 houses by the roadside, the white fields with their neat snake- 

 fences, the dark horizon of pines. I noticed an apple tree by 

 the door of the forlorn shack, to wonder even if its blooming in 

 May would lend the place a suggestion of home. And yet a 

 boy bred here harbored keen interest in birds and their ways, 

 for he knew the White-bellied Swallows, of which five were fly- 

 ing over the dyke opposite, and that they nested in boxes, and 

 that other swallows nested in barns, and still others in chimneys. 

 All the way down this road to the pond we had passed little 

 bunches of Robins and scattered Vesper Sparrows. One bunch 

 of the Robins had dropped down into a tree to rest on its 

 branches like Cedarbirds close together, but they belied any 

 weariness by bursting into a chorus of song. The Vesper Spar- 

 rows, too, had sung a good deal. On our way back the country 

 seemed alive with both species. Robins rose from the ground 

 everywhere, and, lighting on fences and trees, sang as if in their 

 twilight chorus. Had the cold, rain}' morning prevented their 

 song at dawn, and were they seizing this first kindlj' hour of the 

 day to celebrate it, or were they rejoicing in their arrival at old 

 haunts after a long journey ? The Vesper Sparrows, too, seemed 

 to have greatly increased in numbers in the fields we had found 

 them in an hour before. We sat down on a bank to listen to 

 the bird chorus. I had never anywhere heard so much bird 

 song at any time of day. There was no moment when many 

 Robins were not singing; no moment that the sound of Vesper- 

 Sparrow song was not in our ears in great volume; never, even 

 after sun-down in Berkshire sheep pastures, had I heard so 

 many singing. The Robins and Vesper Sparrows, though dom- 



