A Prospectus 



In 1894 the Delaware Valley Ornitholo^cal Club published 

 an annotated list of the ' ' Birds of Eastern Pennsylvania and 

 New Jersey. ' ' Since the compilation of this list was begun the 

 Club has spent nearly twenty years in further study of the bird 

 life of this region and the possibility of publishing another and 

 far more comprehensive work on the same subject has recently 

 been broached at the meetings. The dominant thought in these 

 suggestions has been that while the facts gleaned by the Club on 

 distribution, abundance, migration, nidification etc., should be 

 carefully compiled and welded into as complete an account as 

 possible of the bird as we know it in the Delaware Valley, there 

 should be something more — some sketch that will bring out 

 the individuality of each bird and which will touch what Dr. 

 Trotter has termed the "background of Ornithology," that 

 illusive thing that is now the love of nature, now some familiar 

 association, running through all our bird study and making of 

 Ornithology something more than a mere branch of science. 



The compilation of the body of the work being largely a mat- 

 ter of clerical routine has been left to the last, and attention has 

 centered during the past year upon the preparation of these 

 sketches or biographies of the more familiar birds. The ten 

 men best able to do the work were invited to select ten or fifteen 

 ' ' favorite ' ' species, for from choice, or circumstances, or both a 

 man is always better acquainted with some species than others. 



The results were interesting. The selections were made abso- 

 lutely independently and so widely did preference vary that no 

 less than sixty-seven species were selected and duplications were 

 much fewer than had been anticipated. Only one bird was 

 chosen by as many as five writers — the Cardinal. Seven 

 species were chosen by four men — the Wood Thrush, Catbird, 

 Chat, Field Sparrow, Vesper Sparrow, Purple Grackle, and 



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