32 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 



represented in Xe^y Jersey bird life or at least very slightly. The 

 presence of the Brown Creeper and Solitary Vireo as breeding birds in 

 Sussex county is the only evidence, but our knowledge of the birds of 

 northwestern New Jersey is so ver}^ meagre that there may be other 

 Canadian species breeding there — such would be the Junco, Hermit 

 Thrush, various Warblers, Golden-crowned Kinglet and Winter Wren.^ 



The species mentioned in these groups are only the more char- 

 acteristic ones. The detailed distribution of all will be found in the 

 systematic portion of the report. 



Other conditions affect the distribution of birds besides temperature. 



Many species are strictly pelagic — never seen away from the ocean 

 unless driven in by storms ; others are birds of the sea beach : others — 

 notably the Seaside and Sharp-tailed Sparrows and the Clapper Rail 

 — are birds of the salt meadows. 



The great pine-barren wilderness, with its peculiar conditions of 

 soil and its strikingly difEerent vegetation, furnishes favorable condi- 

 tions for certain species which are rare elsewhere, as the Pine, Prairie, 

 Hooded and Parula Warblers, while many other species — and southern 

 ones, too — are entirely absent, notably the Worm-eating, Kentucky 

 and Blue-winged Warblers. 



The dates of arrival and departure are given under each species, but 

 from the fact that some species are partly resident and the migratory 

 movement is somewhat straggling, it is difficult to select one date that 

 may be said to represent the "date of arrival." The first individual 

 may be a straggler which wintered far north of the bulk of liis kind, 

 and to take his date of arrival would be misleading. Where we have 

 a large number of observers as about Philadelphia, I have adopted 

 the plan of selecting the date when a species had arrived at a majority 

 of the observation stations.^ This eliminates early stragglers, and 

 might be said to be the date of the first bulk movement. 



^ A trip taken June 4th-llth, 1909, by Messrs. S. N. Rhoads, Wm. L. Baily 

 and Dr. Wm. E. Hughes to northern Passaic and Sussex counties showed none 

 of these species present. The Canada, Black-throated Green and Black-throated 

 Blue Warblers were the only birds of Canadian tendencies noted even in most 

 favorable spots, while several Carolinian species occurred, notably in the Wall- 

 kill Valley, but also at Greenwood Lake. It therefore seems that the Canadian 

 element in the New Jersey bird fauna must be regarded as slight and sporadic. 



- See for details Cassinia, 1904-1908, and especially Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., 

 Phila., 1908, pp. 128-156. 



