Vol. XI 



iSof] Stone, Summer Birds of Pine Barrens of N. J. 1 33 



SUMMER BIRDS OF THE PINE BARRENS OF 

 NEW JERSEY. 



BY WITMER STONE. 



The Pine Barrens of New Jersey have long been renowned as 

 a botanical collecting ground, and the botanists of Philadelphia 

 and vicinity take many excursions every year into this region, 

 which is so easy of access and which presents a flora so absolutely 

 different from that of eastern Pennsylvania that nearly every 

 species is a 'rarity' to one familiar only with the plants of the 

 latter section. 



Although the birds of the Pine Barren region are quite as 

 interesting as its flora, ornithologists have been slow to penetrate 

 its deep swamps and to explore its sandy wastes, and slower still 

 to make known the results of their explorations. 



It seems strange that Wilson and Audubon should not have 

 visited this region, but so far as we can judge they only explored 

 one or two points near the coast, and did not then make a very 

 thorough investigation, or they would certainly have had some- 

 thing to say of the abundance of such species as the Parula, 

 Hooded and Prairie Warblers and the Tree Swallow, which are 

 almost unknown in summer in eastern Pennsylvania. Even 

 Cassin and Turnbull seem to have been unfamiliar with the fauna 

 of the Pine Barrens, to judge from the few scattered statements 

 regarding some of the above species which they have made. 



The Pine Barrens occupy the whole of southern New Jersey 

 south of a line from Long Branch to Salem, excepting the 

 maritime marshes and a narrow strip bordering the Delaware 

 River. They consist of a low, flat stretch of sandy ground, some 

 parts forming dreary wastes of loose sand, with a scattering 

 growth of scrub pines and oaks (Quercus nigra and j^>. 

 ilicifolia), and in others covered with continuous pine woods 

 of the taller pitch pine {Pimis riglda). Scattered throughout 

 the region, especially along the sluggish streams, are almost 

 impenetrable swamps of white cedar ( Chamcecyparis thyoides) 

 bordered by thickets of holly and various ericaceous bushes, and 

 numerous open sphagnum and cranberry bogs. 



