ON THE BEACH AT DAYTON A. 65 



besides these there were catbirds, ground 

 doves, red-eyed chewinks, white-eyed che- 

 winks, a song sparrow (one of the few that 

 I saw in Florida), savanna sparrows, myrtle 

 birds, redpoll warblers, a phoebe, and two 

 flickers. The last-named birds, by the way, 

 are never backward about displaying their 

 tender feelings. A treetop flirtation is their 

 special delight (I hope my readers have all 

 seen one ; few things of the sort are better 

 worth looking at), and here, in the absence 

 of trees, they had taken to the ridgepole of 

 a house. 



More than once I remarked white-breasted 

 swallows straggling northward along the line 

 of sand-hills. They were in loose order, but 

 the movement was plainly concerted, with 

 all the look of a vernal migration. This 

 swallow, the first of its family to arrive in 

 New England, remains in Florida through- 

 out the winter, but is known also to go as 

 far south as Central America. The purple 

 martins which, so far as I am aware, do 

 not winter in Florida had already begun 

 to make their appearance. While crossing 

 the bridge, February 22, I was surprised to 

 notice two of them sitting upon a bird-box 



