12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



"I have given my records in detail merely to give you a 

 better idea of its status in this vicinity than you could obtain 

 from any general statement. This year it has been generally 

 distributed and comparatively common. 



" Wet fields or meadows are its usual if not invariable breed- 

 ing grounds here, and it seems satisfied with a very small tract 

 of this character." 



My own acquaintance with this mysterious resident of our 

 state began in 1902, while on a quest for a very different sort of 

 zoological novelty which also dated its historic prominence to 

 the time of Audubon's activity. To paraphrase a verse of John 

 Gilpin's ride — 



"Though upon vinmmah I was bent, 

 I had the birds in mind." 



Speeding along on my silent bike across the rather hilly country 

 which slopes down to Delaware Bay, between Salem and Green- 

 wich, when about four miles north of Greenwich (Cumberland 

 Go. ) and two and a half miles from the bay, I was brought to a 

 quick pause by a bird note brand new to my mental catalog. 

 The rather sudden apparition of panting humanity peering over 

 a rail fence did not seem to disconcert the innocent cause of the 

 intrusion, but with clock-like regularity the quarter minutes 

 were recorded by the weak, sharp "chi-shk" of an unseen per- 

 former. The sound seemed to come out of the ground of a 

 briery, neglected grass field fifteen or twenty feet away. The 

 bird was not seen till I mounted the fence, when, with a sudden 

 mouse-like movement, it stole away from a low perch just 

 above the ground and vanished. By active beating about it 

 was repeatedly flushed, only to dart off a few yards and hide 

 among the grass. It invariably avoided alighting on grass, 

 bushes or fence. In the course of another mile's ride I found 

 another individual singing in a similar locality. Both these 

 were on high upland pastures, no swampy or meadow ground 

 being in sight. 



I then remembered having heard the same song the day be- 

 fore at dusk on the upland borders of the salt marsh at the 

 mouth of Alloway's creek, one mile from Hancock's bridge in 

 Salem Co. 



