BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 51 



Great Meadow, East Lexington. 



In 1872 the town of Arlington made a reservoir at East Lexington by 

 throwing a dam across Vine Brook at the point where it issues from Great 

 Meadow. As the rich, surface soil of the meadow was left undisturbed, and 

 as the water was nowhere raised to a depth exceeding five or six feet, the 

 pond thus formed soon became choked with aquatic vegetation, while over con- 

 siderably more than one half of its total area (about twenty five or thirty acres) 

 button-bushes and sweet gale sprang up in dense thickets, separated in many 

 places, however, by pools or channels of open water. There were also floating 

 islands, tufted with sedges or with cattail flags, and, along the course of the brook 

 above, wide stretches of grassy meadow. A railroad passed close to the pond 

 on the south, but the slopes of the hills which bordered it on the north and west 

 were everywhere thickly wooded. 



In view of these conditions it is not to be wondered at that Great Meadow 

 attracted at one or another season very many such birds as Snipe, Sandpipers, 

 Rails, Herons, Bitterns, Coots, Gallinules, Grebes and Ducks of various kinds. 

 The Pied-billed Grebes maintained a breeding colony there for at least ten suc- 

 cessive seasons, and the Black Duck has been known to nest in the immediate 

 neighborhood. I write of these matters in the past tense, because the reservoir 

 was discontinued in 1900 and the pond was drained in 1902. 



Rock Meadow. 



This fine, large meadow, upwards of one hundred acres in extent, has 

 changed but little, either in character or surroundings, within the pa.st thirty or 

 forty years. It lies partly in Belmont and Waltham, but chiefly in the south- 

 eastern corner of Lexington, near the source of Beaver Brook. Although for 

 the most part open and grassy, it contains many swampy thickets, several tracts 

 of low-lying maple woods and a few wooded ridges and ' marsh islands.' The 

 Concord Turnpike crosses it from east to west on an ancient causeway bordered 

 by pollarded willows. Through the long and alluring vista formed by the trunks 

 and overarching branches of these fine old trees one may walk or drive in cool 

 and unbroken shade during the hottest June day, listening to the songs of Bob- 

 olinks, Red-winged Blackbirds, Swamp Sparrows, Yellow Warblers, Maryland 

 Yellow-throats, Catbirds and other marsh- or thicket-loving birds. Among the 



