JULY. 175 



I never saw, yet they accepted the situation with apparent 

 cheerfulness. 



Nor is it unusual, I may add, to see young birds fol- 

 lowing their parents in this half-helpless way, even as late 

 as the first week in October. I refer to migratory birds — 

 species said not to nest nearer than northern New Eng- 

 land. If so, then young birds capable of a long migra- 

 torial journey accompanied their parents, and were often 

 fed by them. But another possibility suggests itself. May 

 there not be overlooked areas in northern New Jersey — 

 hemlock forests, rhododendron ravines, spots that are cool 

 as autumn the summer long — where straggling pairs lurk 

 unseen and rear their young ? It is nonsense to say that 

 this or that report of the occurrence of a bird is a case of 

 " faulty identification of the species." Our birds are not 

 so very similar in appearance, as a rule, to make this prob- 

 able, and I have record upon record of early appearance in 

 autumn (September), or even earlier, of northern species 

 which I believe had not been so extremely far away ; and 

 this matter of young but wing-strong birds still following 

 their parents, bears out the impression gained from other 

 sources, that our home mountains are not yet sufficiently 

 well studied. Then, too, there are occasional instances of 

 birds breaking the rigid rule of their kind, which may 

 not be repeated for years. The wood-tattler — or solitary 

 sandpiper — ^has nested in central New Jersey. Here is a 

 case where faulty identification is simply impossible. 



I recently sought a cool retreat of which I had heard 

 the day before, hoping there to escape the terrors of a tor- 

 rid day. . I hopefully trudged for more than a mile down 

 a sunny highway where the shrill creaking of crickets was 

 the only sound I heard. Every weed was wilted ; not a 

 daisy but was brown with gritty sand, and the one-time 

 starry St. John's-wort was dulled with dust. Still I 

 plodded on, hoping the cedars, each in its angle of an old 



