watched the chase with an interest mingled with fear. Suddenly a tree swallow 

 appeared. I don't pretend to say that the swallow had in mind the saving of 

 the oriole, but save it it did, whether the act was one of kindness or of acci- 

 dent. The eye had trouble to follow the swallow's rapid flight. It passed 

 between the oriole and the hawk, staying its course momentarily as though 

 with a set intent. The hawk saw the nearer bird, and reasoning that the nearer 

 must necessarily be the easier prey, it turned aside from its pursuit of the oriole 

 and followed the elusive swallow. The oriole made for shelter, while the swal- 

 low, with doubtless an inward chuckle, increased its pace and left the hawk 

 so far in the lurch that it gave up the chase and flew disgustedly back over the 

 woods. 



In the trees along the roadway we found the black-throated blue warblers, 

 the black and white tree-creepers, the yellow warblers, and the fiery redstarts. 

 These last-named warblers, which look like diminutive orioles, were lisping 

 their incessant notes from nearly every tree. We heard the call of the cardinal 

 in the woods. This bird is not common as far north as our Kankakee hunting 

 ground, and one brilliant specimen which flashed across the road and disap- 

 peared in the thicket was the only one of its kind that we saw. 



The woods ended and the marsh began. There was a pool at the edge 

 of the timber, and about it were running two spotted sandpipers. When I was 

 a boy these tiny waterside dwellers were called "tip-ups." The name fits them 

 to a nicety, for their bodies are in constant motion, and look like diminutive 

 teeter-boards ; first the head is in the air, then down it goes, and the apology 

 for a tail bobs up. This operation is repeated incessantly. Some solitary sand- 

 pipers were flying about the pool and the adjacent marsh. Finally, to our 

 surprise, one of them lit on a fence post within twenty feet of us, and there 

 stood fearlessly while we stared at it through our glasses. It is strange how 

 quickly the game birds learn that the shooting season is over. Two weeks 

 before the solitary would have given us a wide berth, even though we had 

 nothing more harmful than field-glasses with which to bring it down. I wanted 

 to put the bird to flight so that we could see its white markings to better 

 advantage, and I picked up a stick to toss toward it. The missile got no farther 

 than my hand, however, because my gentler-minded companions begged me not 

 to abuse, even to that extent, the bird's confidence. 



We flushed one after another three jacksnipe which were feeding in 

 the marsh at the very edge of the road. They rose witli the squawk that is 

 translated into "scaipe" by most of the books. 



A dark cloud was moving rapidly over the marsh. Suddenly its color 

 changed to silver, and tlien as quickly it went to black again. It was a flock 

 of May plover that had lingered late on this ciioicc feeding-ground. The May 

 plover is also called grass snipe and grass plover ; neither of the three is its 

 right name. It is the pectoral sandpiper. The birds go in large flocks, and 



73 



