6 INTRODUCTION 



experience. In case of residents the date of nesting also 

 is given ; of summer residents, the nests should be sought 

 from ten days to three weeks after arrival. 



Page references are given to some of the later and more 

 desirable text-books, as follows : — 



Stearns and Coues, " New England Bird Life," 2 vols, 



Minot, " Land-Birds and Game-Birds of New England," 

 edited by Wm. Brewster, whose notes will be found 

 of especial value. 



Willcox, "Common Land-Birds of New England"; best 

 for the beginner. 



Chapman, " Handbook of Birds of Eastern North Amer- 

 ica" (to which reference is made by the A. O. U. 

 number). When supplied with a good opera-glass 

 and this admirable work in flexible covers, the bird- 

 student may be said to be fully equipped. 



The list contains only those species reported on suffi- 

 ciently good evidence as having been found within a radius 

 of about eight miles of Wellesley College ; yet all of the 

 inland land-birds occurring regularly in eastern Massa- 

 chusetts are included in it. The district covered in- 

 cludes the towns of Wellesley, Weston, Waltham, Newton, 

 Needham, Dedham, Dover, Medfield, Sherborn, Ashland, 

 Framingham, Natick, Wayland, and Sudbury. This tract 

 of country, reaching tide-water on the Charles River at 

 Newton and rising in scattered hills to altitudes of 300 to 

 600 feet, but lying for the most part between 100 and 200 

 feet above sea-level, while presenting a considerable variety 

 of physical conditions in the shape of lakes, rivers, broad 

 savanna-like meadows, forests, and farms, possesses on the 

 whole a practically uniform avifauna, the same species oc- 

 curring throughout the district wherever the conditions are 

 similar. Though not far removed from the coast, its fauna 

 is essentially inland, the coastwise species found being few 



