Bartsch, Summer Birds of the Oneota Valley. 
51 
SUMMER BIRDS OF THE ONEOTA VALLEY. 
(JUNE, JULY, 1895.) 
BY PAUL BARTSCH. 
Paper read before the Third Congress of I. O. A. 
N ature as if to show mankind what the conditions in that great fertile 
• region traversed by the glaciers in the ice age, scarred, planed and 
covered by a morainic deposit, would have been ; left untouched a strip of land 
extending over south-eastern Minnesota, western Wisconsin and north-eastern 
Iowa—a region wild, romantic and beautiful, the dream of our landscape ar¬ 
tist, the paradise of our naturalist. 
This region within our bounds is traversed in the northern portion by the 
Oneota river and its tributaries—it is the avifauna of this tract that I wish to 
consider in the present paper. 
As topographic enwronment is one of the prime factors in the distribution 
of many of our birds, it will not be amiss to briefly consider this feature of our 
chosen field. ' „ 
The Oneota, though not as active as during glacial and preglacial time, is 
nevertheless working slowly and diligently to lower its channel throughout 
most of its course. The lessened amount of water causes the stream to meander 
through a wide flood plane bounded everywhere by high ridges and bold bluffs. 
One may get somewhat of. an idea of the amount of work accomplished by the 
stream in course of time, if he considers that it has cut a gorge through the 
various formations from the Trenton down to about 800 feet below the summit 
of the St. Croix sandstone. . 
The little tributaries hav.e been equally busy and even now seem to try 
hard to cut down through the opposing rocks to keep on the same level with 
the river. Not always able to accomplish this in a uniform manner, owing to 
differences of rock texture, many beautiful water falls and cataracts have been 
formed in their course. Not unfrequently the gorge cut by some small rivulet 
has intersected an underlying water vein* and the additional force has helped to 
grind and cut deeper the lower course of the stream and now a beautiful water 
fall tumbles noisily from the cMff. 
Throughout the course steep hills bound the valley on both sides. Fre¬ 
quently perpendicular cliffs rise almost from the water’s edge to a heighth of 
several hundred feet and where the Oneota lime stone comes to the surface, 
bold, bared, massive battlements crown the summit of the adjacent hills. 
The valley is wide,—the floodplane constitutes the farming land of the 
region. The currant varies with the formation; at places it is slack, then again 
* I particularly have in mind Seevers spring, some two miles south-east of 
Decorah. 
