2?irti=1Lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of The Audubon Societies 



Vol. XIX July— August, 1917 No. 4 



Children of the Midnight Sun 



By JOSEPH DIXON, Berkeley, Cal. 



With photographs by the author 



4M0NG the many species of birds that migrate through the United 

 /\ States, there are perhaps fewer species of shore-birds {Limicolce) that 

 remain to breed within its borders than there are of any other group of 

 migrating birds. Many of these waders are not content to spend their summers 

 even in the northern Canadian provinces, but push on until they reach the very 

 shores of the Polar Sea, where they rear their young during the two months of 

 continuous daylight. 



Herbert K. Job, in 'Wild Wings,' has called attention to the notable fact 

 that, in spite of all the hunting of the day, there were comparatively very few 

 shore-bird pictures. However, photographs of the domestic life of certain 

 species are not so hard to obtain in the far North, provided one has patience 

 and plates which will not 'sweat' from repeated freezing and thawing. In 

 order to be on hand during the breeding-season, one must spend the previous 

 winter in the north, for by the time navigation opens, the young Shore-birds 

 are running about nearly grown. 



The Harvard Alaska-Siberia Expedition of 1913-1914, of which, as the 

 representative of John E. Thayer, I was a member, on account of unfavorable 

 ice conditions spent almost an entire year more than was intended on the Arctic 

 coast of Alaska, two-thirds of the way from Point Barrow to the mouth of the 

 Mackenzie River. To some of us this chance to spend a season on the nesting- 

 grounds of so many rare birds was solace enough for enduring the previous six 

 months of extreme cold and darkness. Among the great and small, no birds 

 were more interesting than the wee Semipalmated Sandpiper {Ereunetes 

 pusillus). 



On May 24, when the brown moss began to peep through the snow in spots, 

 a little Semipalmated Sandpiper with toes cold and numb waded hurriedly along 

 the edge of an ice-filled tundra pool. Here tiny brown larvae were being washed 

 out by a rapidly increasing stream that trickled down from the lower edge of the 



