MIXUP WITH THE LAUGHERS 209 



day. The subdued twitterings of a whole flock 

 of robins came from the elms, close at hand; a 

 big golden eagle, just arrived from his northern 

 summer home, swung along the shore and put 

 to wing some mallards, resting in the quiet shal- 

 lows ; and his close relative, a rough-legged hawk, 

 also just arrived, went drifting by, followed 

 soon after by an idling marsh cousin that peered 

 down curiously at me. Out on the open water, 

 the field-glasses picked up a flock of canvasback 

 ducks bobbing up and down ceaselessly on the 

 waves ; and drew in the morose, ring-billed gulls, 

 till the twisting action of their heads was visible, 

 as they searched the surface of the water; and 

 then the glasses got focused on something else. 



Away across the five-mile expanse of white- 

 caps, a line of dots above the dark horizon 

 drifted into focus and hung there steadily. They 

 held their formation too long to be ducks, and 

 they were going westward off the lake, there- 

 fore I judged that they were a flock of wawas, 

 the first of the wild geese on the fall migration. 

 I guessed too that they were laughers, or 

 speckle-breasts, which are usually the first of 

 their clan to reach the Manitoba fields, in num- 

 bers in the fall. 



