AT HOME 341 



own home, birds, taken as a whole, are quite as plentiful 

 as they were when I was a boy. There are one or two 

 species which have decreased in numbers, notably the 

 woodcock; while the passenger pigeon, which was then 

 a rarely seen straggler, does not now appear at all. Bob- 

 whites are less plentiful. On the other hand, some birds 

 have certainly increased in numbers. This is true, for 

 instance, of the conspicuously beautiful and showy scar- 

 let tanager. I think meadow larks are rather more 

 plentiful than they were, and wrens less so. Bluebirds 

 have never been common with us, but are now rather 

 more common than formerly. It seems to me as if the 

 chickadees were more numerous than formerly. Purple 

 grakles are more plentiful than when I was a boy, and 

 the far more attractive redwing blackbirds less so. But 

 these may all be, and doubtless some must be, purely 

 local changes, which apply only to our immediate neigh- 

 borhood. As regards most of the birds, it would be hard 

 to say that there has been any change. Of course, obvi- 

 ous local causes will now and then account for a partial 

 change. Thus, while the little green herons are quite 

 as plentiful as formerly in our immediate neighborhood, 

 the white-crowned night herons are not as plentiful, be- 

 cause they abandoned their big heronry on Lloyd's Neck 

 upon the erection of a sandmill close by. The only ducks 

 which are now, or at any time during the last thirty years 

 have been, abundant in our neighborhood are the surf- 

 ducks or scoters, and the old-squaws, sometimes known 

 as long-tailed or sou'-sou'-southerly ducks. From late 

 fall until early spring the continuous musical clangor of 



