7 
Mr. Louis Cabot reports warblers as uncommon at Northeast 
Harbor, Me., but common at Grand Liver, Can. This is a 
typical report; but some few observers report birds generally 
as more numerous than in 1903. Mr. Outram Bangs tells me 
that in Wareham, where, he believes, all the tree swallows 
were killed by the storms in 1903, the nesting boxes were 
occupied again in 1904 by this species, probably by new- 
comers. Chimney swifts are reported quite generally as 
absent, rare or reduced in numbers. Mr. Geo. E. Whitehead 
of Millbury records that “ upward of five hundred ” dead 
swifts were taken from a factory chimney in that town in 
1903 ; and that during the season of 1904 he watched a large 
chimney formerly frequented by many swifts, and did not 
see one enter it. In my own experience, in parts of Bristol, 
Plymouth and Middlesex counties swifts were either much 
reduced or rare locally throughout the season until the flight 
in August, when they were seen in numbers in some locali- 
ties. At that time, one afternoon, I saw about thirty birds 
in Billerica, — more than I had seen elsewhere ; but the next 
morning only one was seen. Messrs. William Brewster and 
Balph Hoffman report swifts as common in Cambridge and 
Belmont respectively. 
The birds had a good breeding season in 1904, and prob- 
ably most species will soon recover from the check they re- 
ceived by the June storms of 1903, except, perhaps, the 
purple martins, which seem to have been almost absent from 
Massachusetts in the breeding season of 1904. Martins were 
looked for in April, as usual. A few birds were reported, 
unusually early, from six localities. These w T ere thought to 
be some of the breeding birds which had escaped the catas- 
trophe of 1903; but so far as can be learned, they all dis- 
appeared. Their probable fate may be inferred from the 
story of Mrs. Frank H. Watson of Concord. Mr. Watson 
has two large bird houses, which have been well filled with 
martins for years, but apparently the birds all died during 
the storms of June, 1903. Mrs. Watson says that two pairs 
of martins came to the boxes earlier in April, 1904, than 
usual, but were not seen during or after the cold wave and 
snowstorm which followed the 19th, when some five inches 
