
u ee SE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
> Vol. III.—JULY, 1869.—No. 5. 

SEA-SIDE ORNITHOLOGY. 
BY T. M. BREWER, M. D. 

Tre ornithology of our New England seaboard at the 
present day is very far from presenting either the interest, 
the variety or the sources of excitement, which, even within 
a single generation, were, from Long Island to Grand 
1 Menan, features so characteristic. If we go back yet far- 
; ther, though only to a period within the recollection of that 
Very respectable individual, “the oldest inhabitant," the 
Changes from that recent period to what is now witnessed 
are yet more remarkable, and make our present poverty 
both striking and painful. Then wild-ducks are said to have 
nested on the outer Brewsters. Then, probably, the now 
exterminated Alca impennis was a bird of New England, as 
Was at some period, probably more distant, one of Mas- 
Sachusetts also. Then all our salt marshes and our low- 
lands near the sea swarmed, during the spring and autumn 
Months, with plover, snipe, godwit, tatler, curlew, 
wading birds of various forms and plumage. Then all of 
our estuaries, inlets, coves, bays, rivers and creeks along 
the entire coast, abounded in sea-fowl during „the entire 
Year, the only difference being that at certain seasons of 
the year, the resident species were driven by the ice and 
Eo eee oM LP I ee ee oe s 
EE DARE EMIT E P IMS UNT rex. 
MES E 








1 Clerk's Office of the District Court of the 
Soven in the dng to Act of Congress, in the year 190, by the PeanoDy ACADEMY OF 
| AMER: NATURALIST, VOL. III. 29 (225) 

