The old song says, "Strange we never prize the music till 

 the sweet-voiced bird has flown," but I think we do prize the 

 song and love the singer while he is with us. I am, owing to 

 many shrikes, perfectly bereft of winter birds so far this 

 winter. I have shot two of the shrikes. Last winter I had 

 large flocks of redpolls and of snowflakes, five chickadees, 

 three white-breasted nuthatches, one pair of woodpeckers. 

 We have many summer birds out here in the mountains, 

 unusual numbers of bobolinks were in the meadows near my 

 windows, also many dear song sparrows along Sunny Brook, 

 close by. Robins seem scarce about the lawn, but there are 

 many in the maple grove, one mile away near our sugar 

 house. We shot one red squirrel at 4 o'clock in the morning 

 while he was robbing a chipping sparrow's nest in a tamarack 

 tree over my door. About July English sparrows began nest 

 building in the tamarack tree. The nest has stood many 

 hard winds and storms. I wonder if this is not a new freak 

 of this pest of ours. In May I discovered a shrike's nest as 

 the young birds were leaving it. The nest was in a young 

 pine, and was made of twigs, twine, long pieces of clothes 

 line with strips of cotton cloth hanging from it. I wonder if 

 any other member knows of this northern bird nesting with 

 us. — Alice S. Broivn, Sfarksboro. 



Dr. Lucretius H. Ross of Bennington reported a young 

 American scoter, taken at Bennington November 16, liJlO; a 

 king rail which spent the month of May, 1910, in the reeds of 

 a small mill pond within the Bennington village limits, where 

 its cries were heard night and day by all who lived near, but 

 only a few people were fortvuiate enough to drive it into the 

 open and get a good view of it ; a dovekie, taken alive June 

 1, 1910, in Bennington. It died the following day. This 

 bird was in the summer plumage, although ornithologists 

 say that it is never seen in the United States excepting in the 

 winter plumage. Dr. Ross sent a tabulated list of 119 species 

 observed in 1910, in Bennington and vicinity by himself, 

 Salome B. Ross and Charles Hitchcock. 



Miss Inez Addie Howe of St. Johnsbury recorded seventy- 

 seven species in her tabulated record for 1910. Ipswich spar- 

 rows were her rarest find. 



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