altimore and
orchard orioles rear their young in safety. The cardinal, scarlet tanager,
indigo bunting, and rose-breasted grosbeak form a quartet of which even a
tropical land might well be proud, and the two latter species have, in
addition to brilliant plumage, very pleasing songs. Such wealth of
aesthetic characteristics are unusual in any one species, the wide-spread
law of compensation decreeing otherwise. More sombre hued seed-eaters
which live their lives in the Park are towhees, swamp, song, field, and
chipping sparrows. The bank and barn swallows skim over field and pond all
through the summer, gleaning their insect harvest from the air, and
building their nests in the places from which they have taken their names.
The rare rough-winged swallow deigns to linger and nest in the Park as
well as do his more common brethren.

The dainty pensile nests which become visible when the leaves fall in the
autumn are swung by four species of vireos, the white-eyed, red-eyed,
warbling, and yellow-throated. Of the interesting and typically North
American family of wood warblers I have numbered no fewer than eight which
nest in the Park; these are the redstart, the yellow-breasted chat,
northern yellow-throat, oven-bird, the yellow warbler, blue-winged,
black-and-white creeping warblers, and one other to be mentioned later.

Injurious insects find their doom when the young house and Carolina wrens
are on the wing. Catbirds and robins are among the most abundant breeders,
while chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches are less often seen. The
bluebird haunts the hollow apple trees, and of the thrushes proper the
veery or Wilson's and the splendid wood thrush sing to their mates on the
nests among the saplings.

The rarest of all the birds which I have found nesting in the Park is a
little yellow and green warbler, with a black throat and sides of the
face, known as the Lawrence warbler. Only a few of his kind have ever been
seen, and strange to say his mate was none other than a demure blue-winged
warbler. His nest was on the ground and from it six young birds flew to
safety and not to museum drawers.

NIGHT MUSIC OF THE SWAMP

To many, a swamp or marsh brings only the very practical thought of
whether it can be readily drained. Let us rejoice, however, that many
marshes cannot be thus easily wiped out of existence, and hence they
remain as isolated bits of primeval wilderness, hedged about by farms and
furrows. T