Bulletin No. 26. 39 



THE FIRST DAY OF MAY WITH THE BIRDS. 



The day was spent im my fruit-garden of some eighteen acres about 

 ten miles from Washington, in Montgomery county, Maryland, and 

 about three miles from the north-east corner of the District of Columbia. 

 The locality is about 500 feet above the city, and though I am only a 

 half-mile from the Baltimore and Ohio R. R. and from two electric 

 roads into Washington, I am surrounded on three sides by extensive 

 primitive forests of oak, hickory, chestnut, tulip and peperage, with dog- 

 wood as an underbrush. It is an admirable place for the native forest 

 birds, and fortunately the English Sparrow, though all around me, has 

 never put in his appearance on my premises. 



When I awoke at the dawn of the first day of May I did not hear the 

 Robin, as we do so commonly in the north, for while a few spend the 

 summer here we seldom hear them sing. The most noticable song was 

 that of the Scarlet Tanager, several pairs of which spend the summer in 

 the grove of forest trees around my house. There was also the cheerful 

 whistle of the Cardinal, the tender and suggestive melody of the Wood 

 Thrush, the chant of the Accentor, which also favored me a little after 

 sunset with his spirited song in flight By the way, that sky-lark perform- 

 ance of* song in flight far above the tree-tops, is very common here in the 

 evening twilight, also occasionally during cloudy days, and I have heard 

 it nearly every hour of the night. The monotonous song of the Che- 

 wink, the half-talking half-singing performance of the Brown Thrasher, 

 the twitter of the Chipping Sparrow, the plaintive melody of the Field 

 Sparrow — one of the most common bird melodies here — the strongly 

 differentiated songs of the Prairie Warbler, the Maryland Yellow-throat 

 and the Black-and-white Creeper, the spirited call of the Great Crested 

 Flycatcher and the pretty syllables of the Red-eyed and Yellow-throated 

 Vireos were among the bird melodies of the day. To-day, May 3rd, we 

 have the Yellow-breasted Chat, which may be regarded among the latest 

 arrivals of the season. I must not omit the Tufted Titmouse, the 

 White-breasted Nuthatch and the Carolina Chickadee, which are among 

 the common birds here. Of course the ever-present Crow was heard, 

 and at night we could hear the ditty of the Whippoorwill. All the above 

 species spend the suinmer here These are the birds which made the 

 greatest impression on us, on the first day of May. Many others might 

 have been present in other localities in the neighborhood, for the above 

 is by no means a complete list of the birds in my part of Maryland. I 

 have simply given the impressions of the day, for one busy on his prem- 



