DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 21 



The day declines, and the Wood Thrush, latest of all evening 

 songsters, pours out his soul in the sweetest of liquid notes. At 

 length the woods are all but hushed and an indescribable sense 

 of loneliness comes upon us. Every sound attracts attention. 

 Even the earliest mosquito, possibly the ancestor of that later 

 host which makes the spot unbearable in summer, hums his 

 presence. All these minor interruptions, however, are lost when 

 from a distant quarter of the woods the call of the Whip-poor- 

 wills arise in ever-increasing volume until the sounding notes, 

 at first a pleasure, now become a monotony — most assuredly 

 not an influence conducive to sound slumber. Had invectives 

 been well-directed missiles, the Whip-poor-will camp-meeting 

 would have been routed ignominiously. 



At daybreak the voices of twittering birds stirred us from our 

 broken slumber. To hear the purling waters of the brook made 

 us eager for the start. Launching our canoe, we hastily climb 

 in and are off. What a day for pleasurable excitement and ex- 

 perience ! Overhung with leaf and branch the stream is diffi- 

 cult to navigate. In these first reaches there are no banks, rela- 

 tively speaking, no happy vistas of overarching trees to gaze 

 along. Little isles of alder and the fragrant Leucothoe shrub 

 stand out defiantly, in the midst of the crawling current. 

 Everything is chaos. Veritable dams occur where fallen trees 

 back up the offal of the stream. These must be brushed aside 

 or else cut through. In the early day an old bridge was passed, 

 as neglected and unused as the road which leads over it. As 

 we penetrate these tangles the voice of the Yellowthroat is heard 

 most frequently. Flying at times to a nearby branch, the little 

 fellow scolds vehemently. We wonder if it is not with a meas- 

 ure of pride that he thus vaunts himself before us, conscious, 

 perhaps, of the spring-freshened color of his plumage. 



There is a marked advantage in observing bird life from a 

 canoe. Everything is approached from a different viewpoint. 

 Banks and borders are explored without fear of swishing leaf or 

 snapping twig carrying an undetermined species beyond the line 

 of ken. And so as we steal down upon the unsuspecting Che- 

 wink, instantly he stops his scratching in the brittle leaves, flies 

 off with a loud alarm note only to return stealthily through the 



