872 Notes on the Migrations of Birds. (November, 
(5) The routes of New England migrants.—In visiting Lenox, 
Berkshire county, Massachusetts, several years in April, I have 
-been astonished to find that though so high (1200-1300 feet 
above the sea), and in spring so bleak and backward, it gets some 
of its birds (for instance, bay-winged and chipping sparrows) be- 
fore either Boston on the coast or Litchfield, lower and over forty 
miles more south—as I have determined by returning to these 
places from Lenox, and making immediate comparison. 18381— 
Bay-winged sparrows in full song at Lenox, April 16; I returned 
to Litchfield two days later, but found none till the 2oth. The 
configuration of the country, in connection with such observa- 
tions, seems to show that many birds follow the coast and rivers, 
ascend broad valleys sooner than narrow, and thence spread up 
the slopes and hills, perhaps escaping occasionally through gaps 
where water-courses nearly meet, from one basin to another. 
Therefore migrants, especially those hurrying, are comparatively 
few, or wanting, along high ridges—as exemplified at Litchfield 
_by the scarcity in spring of warblers of the Canadian fauna. 
(6) The effects of elevation on the ornithological calendar.— 
Though comparisons of full value should be based upon simul- 
taneous and repeated observations, I venture the conclusions 
(illustrated by my list of dates, based upon daily search) that 
itchfield, as compared with Boston, is, from its elevation, back- 
ward in its spring, and in getting the earlier migrants, but that 
when, after a few hot days, it suddenly gets its summer with won 
derful rapidity, it gains from being nearer the south-west sources 
of migration, and gets its later resident birds—for instance, the 
wood pewee—sooner. : 
(7) Local variations —Such are the autumn congregation of 
over a dozen golden-winged woodpeckers in a flock, and the 
singing of field sparrows and of redstarts here often with a fall- 
ing instead of a rising inflection. Such specific variations as "~ 
winged blackbirds, in their spring chorus, congregating come 
monly in one tree, while the rusty grakels often each take @ 
tree top or limb for himself, and such individual variations as 4 
nuthatch cracking open a hard nut (probably for a maggot) are 
also curious. . 
I subjoin here, though the evidence is not complete, the records 
of a Tennessee warbler, May 6, 1881, and of a black-and-yellow 
warbler nesting. Martins, a gentleman here tells me, kill inter ae 
lopers of their own species, cracking the skull. a 
