12 The Ornithology of Chester County 



ial homes, the local strain of the Bobwhite made its 

 last stand, and tradition says that the Heath Hen 

 inhabited this growth in early Colonial times. A 

 similar and more extensive tract occurs in Elk and 

 Nottingham townships, extending into Maryland; 

 where the pitch pine is the dominant tree and the 

 Prairie Warbler a regulai breeder. 



Anomalism in habitat is exemplified in the absence 

 or extreme scarcity of breeding members of the 

 Red-tailed Hawk and the Great Horned Owl on 

 the ridge forming the Delaware-Schuylkill water- 

 shed, where the Cooper's Hawk is common. The 

 paucity of winter visitants on this ridge cannot be 

 attributed to insufficient food or shelter, but I think 

 it is altogether due to the northern visitor follow- 

 ing the line of the least resistance on either side, 

 i. e. the valleys of the Delaware or Schuylkill. 



Local ornithologists have been most active and 

 more numerous in the vicinity of Kennett Square, 

 Westtown, West Chester, Coatesville and Berwyn; 

 neighborhoods originally settled largely by the Eng- 

 lish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish and German members of 

 the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers;^ 

 to whom the study of the natural sciences seemed 

 peculiarly agreeable. Few like sections have been 

 more carefully worked than the south-central to the 

 eastern part of Chester county, and specimens from 

 this region may be found in nearly every large col- 

 lection. 



Near the close of the eighteenth century, John J. 

 Audubon^ settled at "Mill Grove" on the banks of 

 the Perkiomen and Schuylkill, opposite Valley Forge 



