248 WILD WINGS 



by their position, on long, stilt-like legs, stood sev^eral birds of 

 a kind I had never seen before in my life, another Southern 

 loiterer, the Black-necked Stilt. How gracefully they waded 

 about, probing the muddy bottom for worms or mollusks with 

 their long, sensitive bills ! A Hock of small migrating sand- 

 pipers, probably the Semipalmated, were also feeding along 

 the edge. 



Of course the terns' nests were easily discovered, hollows 

 in the sand, quite near together, usually containing two eggs. 

 But it took considerable searching to locate four nests of the 

 plover, now out on the sand, then in the shelter of a weedy 

 clump or under the thin shade of the straggling mangroves. 

 At the very outset we stumbled ui)()n a nest of four eggs of 

 the stilt, and presently found another with three. They were 

 each in the sand back a little fn)m the water, the first by the 

 curious, spreading root of a red mangrove, the other near 

 some weeds. The hollow in each case was ]:)rettily lined with 

 bits of shell and a few weed-stems. I wish I could have 

 stayed there alone to study and piiotograph these pretty 

 life-scenes. The presence of a party of men talking and 

 tramping around throws birds of such timid nature into 

 a state of panic. One needs to be somewhat of a hermit in 

 taste to get the most and best out of such surroundings. Yet 

 we are social beings, and the thought of life alone on a lonely 

 key in Barnes's Sound, scores of miles from human aid, 

 persecuted day and night by horrid swarms of venomous 

 insects, is not altogether attractive. 



There is a class of shore-birds intermediate between the 

 boreal and south-temperate extremes of their order. Though 

 not reaching the far north, they yet penetrate within the 

 Canadian boundary, and also breed far south, as well as 

 at intermediate points ; such are the Long-billed Curlew, 

 the Great Marbled Godwit, the Bartramian Sandpiper or 



