12 The Ornithology of Chester County 
ial homes, the local strain of the Bobwhite made its 
last stand, and tradition says that the Heath Hen 
inhabited this growth in early Colonial times. A 
similar and more extensive tract occurs in Elk and 
Nottingham townships, extending into Maryland; 
where the pitch pine is the dominant tree and the 
Prairie Warbler a regulai breeder. 
Anomalism in habitat is exemplified in the absence 
or extreme scarcity of breeding members of the 
Red-tailed Hawk and the Great Horned Owl on 
the ridge forming the Delaware-Schuylkill water- 
shed, where the Cooper’s Hawk is common. ‘The 
paucity of winter visitants on this ridge cannot be 
attributed to insufficient food or shelter, but I think 
it is altogether due to the northern visitor follow- 
ing the line of the least resistance on either side, 
i. e. the valleys of the Delaware or Schuylkill. 
Local ornithologists have been most active and 
more numerous in the vicinity of Kennett Square, 
Westtown, West Chester, Coatesville and Berwyn; 
neighborhoods originally settled largely by the Eng- 
lish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish and German members of 
the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers ;? 
to whom the study of the natural sciences seemed 
peculiarly agreeable. Few like sections have been 
more carefully worked than the south-central to the 
eastern part of Chester county, and specimens from 
this region may be found in nearly every large col- 
lection. 
Near the close of the eighteenth century, John J. 
Audubon’ settled at ‘““Mill Grove” on the banks of 
the Perkiomen and Schuylkill, opposite Valley Forge 
