Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MIGRATION. Certain phases of bird migration in New Hampshire are perhaps of sufficient interest to warrant a few remarks in addition to the notes given under the several species in the following list. . The coastwise migration of many of the smaller land birds is worthy of much further study. Mrs. Celia Thaxter ('70, p. 581, et seq.) has given a short account, written in her charming way, of the land birds occurring during the migrations, at the Isles of Shoals. Here, at some six or seven miles off the coast of Rye, she writes that about the 27th of March " the islands are alive with song sp arrows Robins and blackbirds ,Agelaius phcenicus appear with the sparrows; a few blackbirds appear and remain; the robins, finding no trees, flit across to the mainland. Yellow-birds ,Dendroica cestiva] and kingbirds occasionally build -here, but very rarely By the 23rd of April come the first swallows and flocks of martins Progne subis], golden-winged and downy woodpeckers, the tiny ruby-crowned wren Regulus calendula), and troops of many other kinds of birds; kingfishers that perch on stranded kellocks, little nuthatches that peck among the shingles for hidden spiders All these tarry only awhile in their passage to the mainland Now and then a bobolink pays us a flying visit, and, tilting on a blackberry spray, poms out his intoxicating song; some morning is heard the fairy bugling of an oriole; a scarlet tanager honors the place with half a day's sojourn." These migrants may very likely be cutting across the curve of the coast to strike the Maine shores farther north, and in fall there seems to be a somewhat similar movement inthe reverse direction. Mr. A. A. Eaton, of Seabrook, writes me that one day in October, a few years since, as he lay off shore in a boat, great numbe...