AT LINDEN BEND. 5 



life ? I floated with tlie tide for a long distance, yet 

 neither heard nor saw a single bird. To be sure, it is 

 July, a comparatively birdless month, so far as singing 

 goes ; but I doubt if another stretch of creek valley in 

 the county is so completely deserted cannot at least 

 boast of a crested tit or a song-sparrow. 



It is not always so. Come on a bright May morning 

 when the leaves are half grown, and see the northward- 

 bound warblers. I can vividly recall one sunny May 

 day, twenty years ago, when I floated by Linden Bend 

 for the first time. The preceding days of bright sun- 

 shine, followed by moonlit nights, had brought the war- 

 blers, and never since have I seen so many congregated 

 in a limited spot as there were then among the lindens 

 and sloping branches of the crooked hornbeams. 



Among them, conspicuous for their numbers, size, and 

 splendid singing, were water-thrushes. They were the 

 southern large -billed species, and, in New Jersey, the 

 least abundant of the three kinds. Evidently a number 

 of them had been migrating in company, but whether 

 still on the move, or purposing to remain, I did not de- 

 termine. As I have seen a few individuals about the 

 creek every summer since then, it is probable that the 

 greater number remained during the summer of '65. 

 Certainly the sweetness of their songs and general air 

 of content suggested that they had chosen this secluded 

 nook of the creek valley for their summer home. There 

 is, indeed, nothing remarkable in the occasional great 

 abundance, here in central New Jersey, of southern 

 birds, usually rare, or, at least, not common. Such in- 

 stances I have noted three times since 1860, and can 



