PREFACE 



IN 1767 Gilbert White complained that he 

 had none to share his tastes in natural 

 history. He says: " For want of a com- 

 panion to quicken my industry and sharpen 

 my attention, I have made but slender prog- 

 ress in a kind of information to which I have 

 been attached from my childhood." In these 

 modern days, nature students are numerous 

 and I have been blessed with friends who have 

 appreciated to the full these dunes and 

 marshes of Ipswich. 



For the last twenty years I have spent most 

 of my simimer vacations at Ipswich and have 

 made brief visits there as often as I could at 

 other seasons, while almost twenty years be- 

 fore that the birds of this Massachusetts coast 

 began to claim my attention. 



The opportunities for study are large in 

 these regions, and my excuse for not having 

 gone deeper in all these years, is that I have 

 been of necessity a brief bird-of-passage in 



