Birds oil Long Island. 123 



of no other shore bird which in colour is so much hke a 

 snowtiake of the winter fields, although their flight is quite 

 different. Apparently this Plover is barely holding its own 

 against the hunter, and unless strenuous measures are taken to 

 protect them they will surely go the way of other dainty and 

 delightful birds whch have nearly or quite disappeared. It is a 

 false sense of sportsmanship that would carry the destruction 

 of our native birds and animals to the point of extermination. 



There are many other birds in this favoured locality, 

 which combines, in a way not often found, the advantages of 

 seashore and country. Always there are quantities of gulls 

 and terns, sandpipers, kingfishers, bitterns, blue herons, both 

 the great and the lesser; quawks, or night herons, and numerous 

 ospreys, of whose low-built nests I Have frequently written. 

 These varieties in a few weeks will be increased by many other 

 sliore birds which come down from the north, for this is a 

 favourite highway for the spring and fall migrants. Then the 

 hunters will appear, and the crack of the shotgun will take the 

 place of the plaintive and lonesome cres, wdiich at this season 

 make a trip along the shore so intensely interesting. 



This morning, as I was quietly walking along the highway 

 through a patch of second growth thickly studded with under- 

 brush, sharp call notes of a bird caused me to halt, and a brief 

 inspection revealed a mother Black-throated Green Warbler 

 feeding her full-grown youngster, full grown not alone in body 

 but in appetite, as observation soon revealed. For during the 

 brief time I was a spectator to this domestic ceremony, the 

 sprightly mother fed an extraordinary number of worms to the 

 greedy youngster. And its appetite, apparently, did not lose 

 even its edge. Oliver Twist's demand for " more " could 

 scarcely have been more insistent than the constant and emphatic 

 call of this voracious fledghng. And all the tme I watched them 

 the mother flew about seemingly in greatest haste, returning 

 to the young bird every moment or two with a struggling worm. 

 She gleaned the top branches of a sumac tree, destroying the 

 worms that were at work upon the foliage. What valuable 

 alHes of the farmer and the orchardman the birds are! If all 

 could see what the birds do for mankind, how easy it would be 

 tv^ secure their protection ! 



