JStrli^lUre 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. IV March— April, 1902 No. 2 



Voices of a New England Marsh 



BY WILLIAM BREWSTER 



With illustrations from mounted specimens in the American Museum of Natural History 



TO most people a fresh water marsh has little to offer in the way of 

 beauty or attractiveness. Indeed it is quite generally regarded as so 

 much waste land; unsightly from its primitive condition; unprofit- 

 able because of the difficulty of harvesting its coarse and unnutritious 

 grasses; even prejudicial to the comfort and health of those who dwell near 

 it by reason of the swarms of venomous mosquitoes and noisy frogs which 

 it harbors and the noxious, malarial vapors which it is popularly supposed to 

 generate. 



Such at least appears to be the consensus of opinion respecting the Fresh 

 Pond marshes at Cambridge, although from the time of Nuttall and the 

 Cabots to the present day they have been to a small, but steadily increasing 

 number of nature lovers and sportsmen, an inexhaustible source of interest 

 and enjoyment. During this period they have suffered many and grievous 

 changes, but there yet remains an ' unimproved ' area sufficiently large and 

 primitive to attract and shelter innumerable muskrats, a few minks and, at 

 the proper seasons, many species of wading and water birds. The voices 

 of these and other marsh -frequenting-creatures have always had for me an 

 absorbing interest — due largely, no doubt, to the extreme difficulty of dis- 

 entangling and identifying them; as the editor of Bird -Lore encourages 

 me to think that they may also interest some of its readers I have attempted, 

 in the present paper, to describe the sounds with which I am more or less 

 familiar, at the same time briefly sketching some of the more characteristic 

 habits of their authors and touching still more lightly on the aspects which 

 their favorite haunts wear at the different seasons. 



Through the long New England winter the Fresh Pond marshes are 

 encased in glittering ice or buried deep under a mantle of wind -sculptured 

 snow. Flocks of Snow Buntings occasionally circle over them; Shrikes 

 and Hawks of several kinds perch on the isolated trees to watch for prey; 



