DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 39 



Pocomoke. Pushing our canoes up against its swift current we 

 came ere long to an old mill with its dam and the mill-pond 

 above it. A great part of this pond was thickly set with small 

 cypress trees. Its headwaters were lost in dense thickets which 

 even the slender canoes could not penetrate. Here at last we 

 found the Prothonotary Warbler, the most splendid species of 

 his group, and on the shores of this pond we also saw the 

 Hooded Warbler. 



Leaving our canoes, two of us one day pushed on back into 

 the pine woods and explored their dark green aisles. Here the 

 Pine Warbler was common as it always is in such localites. 

 Often the monotonous twitter of this species is the only evidence 

 of bird-life in the sandy pine regions of New Jersey, Virginia, 

 or the Carolinas. 



It is in these woods that we also find the little Brown-headed 

 Nuthatches. Their cheerful chuckles and chatters and their 

 bright and busy ways give a pleasant accent to the somewhat 

 gloomy forest. We came upon them several times in the pines 

 of the Pocomoke region. 



It is interesting to realize that at a point only one hundred 

 miles south of Philadelphia we may thus get on intimate terms 

 with species which in the Delaware Valley are wholly unknown 

 or only met with as very rare stragglers. In this group we may 

 put the Prothonotary, Yellow-throated and Hooded Warblers, 

 the Brown-headed Nuthatch, the Mockingbird, the Blue-gray 

 Gnatcatcher, the Red-bellied and the Pileated Woodpeckers. 



Our camp on the Pocomoke, while in a secluded and lonely 

 spot, was yet not far removed from civilization. In the dis- 

 tance we could hear the Killdeers calling from the furrowed 

 fields, and at night the bay of the farmer's dog would mingle 

 with the hooting of the Barred Owl. This proximity to a civili- 

 zation which we saw little of really increased our list of species, 

 for the meeting of field and woodland is always a good bird- 

 ground. Here we could pick up the different varieties of 

 finches, and here we would startle the Quail, which would 

 whirr back into the dense thickets of the river bottom. 



Yes, taking it all in all, it was a good country, and a region 

 where somehow a bit of the real South seems to have slipped 

 very far north. 



