woods, investigate, for the Worm-eating Warbler's 

 twitter is almost identical with it, though a little 

 clearer and truer. 



About Hopatcong in the north are other chances 

 well worth a day's time. In places there is sufficient 

 Usnea Moss for the Parula, and there are other birds 

 that the great expanse of water attracts. 



Besides all these, a local race of Great-horned Owls 

 used to exist in our very midst and I have no doubt 

 that some are still about. I have found three nests 

 with eggs or young on Mine Mount, and one in the 

 Ravine as well as two in the Great Swamp; but for 

 them you must look in February as the eggs hatch out 

 about March 1st. Broad-winged and Sparrow 

 Hawks are regular summer residents, though they, 

 like all the other Raptores, have decreased in num- 

 bers very greatly. 



The above opportunities should not be neglected 

 as conditions are changing — the breeding Hawks and 

 Owls, Plover, Woodcock, Ducks and Grouse, are 

 already reduced by guns and by the constant march 

 of progress, and the Great Swamp may perhaps some 

 day be drained as the spring-runs on Mine Mount 

 have been. The thickets are being cleared, old fields 

 reclaimed, orchards kept clear of dead-wood, fruit 

 blossoms and consequently the insect food of orchard 

 birds poisoned, and these changes have already caused 

 a considerable difference in the relative abundance of 

 the species. At present none, or very few at least, 

 are entirely lost to us, but we should lose no time in 

 recording the lia])its of those that are becoming rare, 

 remembering that tlie same species may have quite 

 different traits under other circumstances and in other 

 places, and that therefor observations neglected now, 

 may be opportunities forever lost. 



