INTRODUCTION 



THE AREA INCLUDED 



The area covered by Dr. Chapman's List was roughly 

 within a circle every point on the circumference of which was 

 fifty miles from City Hall. It has been deemed expedient to 

 alter it in several particulars. The area covered by the 

 present Handbook is roughly a rectangle. It includes the 

 whole of Long Island, for a century the favorite field of New 

 York ornithologists, and that part of New York State on the 

 east bank of the Hudson River between the northern bound- 

 ary of West Chester County and the Connecticut line. On 

 the west side of the Hudson it includes the whole of northern 

 New Jersey, south to the southern extremity of Warren 

 County on the Delaware, and a line drawn from that point 

 across the State to Perth Amboy. A glance at the accom- 

 panying map will make this clear. The small portion of 

 Connecticut within fifty miles of New York is left out, as it 

 is adequately covered by a recent report on the birds of the 

 State, and because no students with New York affiliations go 

 there or reside there. That portion of New York State on 

 both banks of the Hudson River, which is excluded, is 

 practically terra incognita ornithologically. No bird student 

 of any attainments has ever worked in Putnam County, 

 and it is fifty years since any intensive work has been done 

 in either Orange or Rockland Counties. In New Jersey the 

 area has also been reduced by the elimination of the coast, 

 such parts of the Pine Barrens as lie within fifty miles, and 

 the Princeton section. The two latter belong more properly 

 to the territory of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club. 

 New York students rarely visit them and know little about 

 them. As a result of these changes all records from Con- 

 necticut, the Hudson Highlands, Princeton and other exclud- 

 ed portions of New Jersey, which were given in Chapman's 

 List, are here omitted. 



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