12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



day, BO it may be that most of the Robins of the neighborhood 

 reported to some roost hereabouts where their dawn songs were 

 sung far out of my hearing. I doubt, however, if this explains 

 it, for the birds at home were still resorting — as they usually do 

 until the middle of April — to a near-by roost nightly. Alto- 

 gether the distribution of the Robins at Brown's Mills puzzled 

 me. That very many breed here empty nests in every road- 

 side tree attest. It was surprising, too, that most of the Robins 

 of the neighborhood were still in flocks. Was it that the Robins 

 that breed at Brown's Mills were still to come from the South ? 

 And does this flocking indicate that our earliest Robins are the 

 birds that summer in the far north? 



The morning after our arrival we heard in the early hours 

 besides the solitary Robin onl}- the Carolina Chickadees, which 

 persistenth' sang against each other from the tall pines about 

 the inn, and Meadow Lark notes that pierced through to us from 

 the open land northwest. The day was warm, but a walk 

 through the pines by the pond, and an eye on the skies, and 

 open ears as we loafed about the lawn, brought the list this first 

 day only to thirteen. Flickers called rather frequently from the 

 woods; Bluebirds infrequently gurgled across, high up in the 

 skies; a solitary Grackle labored west at sunset. All day long 

 Chipping Sparrows and Pine Warblers and Snowbirds graduated 

 their similar songs into one another so that at times you were 

 troubled to identifj' the singers. The Snowbirds were legion 

 this day everywhere, on the inn lawns, on the sandy fields, in 

 the peach and pear orchards and in the pine woods. I have 

 never seen so many anywhere as I saw this day and the next. 

 They sprang up before you like grasshoppers in a June meadow. 

 A Downy Woodpecker was busy off and on in the tall trees out- 

 side our window; twice I saw a pair of Doves hurtle by, and 

 once I heard a Song Sparrow, which in the pines is not a com- 

 mon bird, but when you are well without them as plenty as 

 may be. The Turkey Buzzards that you would see aloft almost 

 any time you looked up completed a list of thirteen birds, not 

 many for a day spent out of doors in the last days of March. 

 Nor was there an eventful episode in bird life to note. One bird 

 a friend encountered here a year before was far more interesting 



