1891
June
Description of Eel Pond Marshes (No 6)
North Truro, Mass.
near these flats or the sand beach already mentioned.
  As compared with the Fresh Pond marshes the 
Eel Pond and its surrounding beds of flags has
two species (the Bittern and Ruddy Duck) which
are wanting in the former locality and it lacks 
two which are numerous and characteristic there
viz. the Long-billed Marsh Wren and Swamp
Sparrow. The absence of the latter bird is
probably due to the fact that there are no
tussocks or bunches of tall dead grass, in one
or the other of which it usually places its
nest (I do not remember ever seeing a Swamp
Sparrows'nest in cat-tails), but why the
Marsh Wrens have not settled there is difficult
to understand for they nest freely in cat-tails
in the Fresh Pond region. It cannot be that they
have overlooked the Eel Pond for Miller finds
them numerous there in early autumn but
at the time of our visit there certainly was
not one in the entire extent of marshes.
  The cat-tail marshes about the Eel Pond are
said to embrace upwards of 300 acres and
this acreage is steadily increasing for the flags
year by year push their outposts further and
further out into the pond and sand, blown
from the neighboring hills & beaches, unites 
with the dead stalks of the flags and other
vegetable drift to form a layer of muddy soil.
At its southern extremity the Eel Pond marsh
is separated by a dyke from another
marsh of fully equal extent and apparently