10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



common, or rather so, in fall. I have never found it breeding, 

 nor in the breeding season, within six miles of Plainfield (though 

 it possibly breeds within that distance southwesterly from here, 

 between New Market and Bound Brook). It is of much more 

 common and regular occurrence in the Passaic Valley and Great 

 Swamp region north of the mountain north of Plainfield. It is 

 a permanent resident there as I have found it in the winter 

 in several different years, and on July 1, 1900, observed one 

 (and one or two more near by) at its nest in the Great Swamp 

 region, one mile north of Myersville. Through the country east 

 and south of Plainfield, it is probably wholly absent as a sum- 

 mer resident, though may possibly be found in a few spots 

 which I have not visited. On September 21, 1901, and August 

 16 and 30, 1902, I made canoe trips along the Canal and Raritan 

 river, just west of Raritan, and there found this species more 

 numerous than I have found it anywhere else. I was informed 

 that the birds were seen throughout the summer and have no 

 doubt that they breed." 



Mr. Frank L. Burns, of Berwyn, Chester county, Pennsyl- 

 vania, writes that he has always regarded the bird as a resident 

 in that vicinity, though he believed that he never observed it 

 during the month of January. According to his statements it 

 undoubtedly winters in certain years in the Chester Valley. 

 "Up to 1887," writes Mr. Burns, "it was not uncommon, be- 

 came so until 1893 in this neighborhood, and at the present 

 time three pairs are a goodly number to meet in a day's ramble 

 over Easttown township or in the Great Valley." 



These scattered notes simply serve to show that this erratic 

 bird is probably more erratic than we had supposed. He is 

 certainly a "great genius," as Dr. Coues has remarked, "no 

 less brilliant and versatile in character than in i^l'^iniage. " 

 Even as far back as the time of Mark Catesby he was playing 

 the harlequin, rattling, with evident delight, on the "boarded 

 houses," and from the very first manifesting a preference for 

 the villages and plantations. Apart from his beauty and the 

 sentiment with which manj' of us may, perchance, associate 

 him, we are attracted by the bold way in which he seems to set 

 at defiance the laws of distribution and migration, and by the 

 strange habits which he now and then displays. 



