DELAWARE VALI-EY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 33 



song, aa is quoted by Chapman in his description, seemed 

 composed, half of the Black and White Warbler's, and half of 

 the Chipping Sparrow's. 



On the eastern side of the lake a hill slopes gently to the 

 water's edge. This hill-side had been burned over within a 

 year or two, huckleberry bushes, young birches and epilobium 

 were the characteristic plants. This was the chosen home of 

 the White-throated Sparrows, and they were in abundance. 

 Along the edge of this tract, where the bushes grew in the 

 shallow water, my cousin and I detected a call note (apparently) 

 which at once struck us as being wholly new. A little search 

 showed the note to come from a small Flycatcher, in non-com- 

 mittal brown and white plumage. The characteristics of his 

 race were well-marked, even down to the fluttering and twit- 

 tering combination gone through on returning to a perch after a 

 fly-catching sally. Having neither gun nor disposition to use 

 one had it been available, there remains something to be de- 

 sired as to the identification of this bird, j-et by subtracting 

 from the total list of Flycatchers, those which it certainly was 

 not, there remains but one, namely, the Alder Flycatcher. On 

 one occasion I heard perhaps three or four of the birds calling 

 at the same time from different sides of the lake. 



Yet more conspicuous than any of the foregoing, were the Great 

 Blue Herons. How different they were from those which I had 

 seen in the lower country of Pennsylvania and New Jersey! 

 There they had always been almost as voiceless as the Shnrp- 

 shinncd Hawk, and as shy and wary as a bird well could be. 

 But at Pocono Lake, the hunted criminal frame of mind seemed 

 wholly abandoned. They had voices, good, strong ones, tro, 

 and were not afraid to use them. Their most usual call was a 

 sudden squawk, longer than the Night Heron's quack, and as 

 my cousin put it, more liUed with the sound of x; and for tame- 

 ness, they were models, indeed. In the morning and evening 

 twilight they would allow a canoe to approach almost, as it 

 seemed, within reach of tlvC paddle. Perhaps twenty or thirty 

 feet would be a fair estimate of my nearest interview. It ap- 

 peared that a brood of young had been raised nearby, and that 



