CHAPTER XXII. 

 AUTUMNAL DAYS. 



THIS twenty-first day of September (1881) is an ideal 

 day of that delightful month of our clime. Cloudless 

 and clear, warm but not hot, the air purified by recent 

 showers, every breath is an aesthetic inspiration. Ensconced 

 away among the bushes on the south shore of Johnson's 

 Creek, just opposite the point formed by its oblique en- 

 trance into Lake Ontario, I am watching the various 

 water-birds as they alight, all unsuspectingly, on that point. 

 The near sites are within gun-shot, and the furthest ones are 

 easily'reconnoitered with a glass. Supposing that you are, 

 my reader, in spirit, at my side, I will try to interpret to 

 you what we see. That little Semipalmated Sandpiper 

 {Eretmetes pusillus) , moving hurriedly like a gray speck about 

 the shore, is rather late in the season for him. He may re- 

 turn to us from his breeding grounds, in the high latitudes 

 of the north, as early as the latter part of July, and gener- 

 ally is quite common on all our shores and water-courses in 

 August. It is quite out of order, too, for this bird to be thus 

 alone, as it is almost always in flocks, and not infrequently 

 in company with its near relative, the Least Sandpiper 

 {Tringa minutilld) . I have seen it in large flocks in the 

 month of August, on Niagara River, alighting on the large 

 rafts of logs on their way to the mills of Tonawanda. It 

 is a graceful, active little Wader, reminding one somewhat 



