172 



Shore Birds. 



spring as they are in the fall, a circum- 

 stance due apparently to the fact that a 

 great many of them migrate northward by 

 an inland course over the Great Lakes, on 

 whose shores they are plentiful in early 

 summer. 



Early in May the least sandpipers or 

 sandpeeps are with us, graceful, musical, 

 restless little creatures, devoting themselves 

 unceasingly to the great business of life, 

 following the tide out with its ebb, and re- 

 treating before it when it flows. There are 

 two or three varieties of these, and along 

 with them is found the sanderling, feeding 

 hke them along the edges of tide water. 



By May 20 the red-breasted sandpiper 

 puts in his appearance, and announces him- 

 self with his dual whistling note, but he 

 does not come to stay; he has taken his 

 ticket for the great, lone northern land, 

 and simply stops for food and rest, but 

 flock succeeds flock until by the first week 

 of June they have all disappeared. 



These birds scratch like a hen in pursuit 

 of horseshoe eggs. Turnstones, too, join 

 with them in the pursuit, and when a find 

 is made there is frequently some free fight- 

 ing over its appropriation. They are 

 abundant all the way from the Great Lakes 

 to Cape Breton, and are supposed to breed 

 very far north. They are back again in 

 August, the adult males reaching us the 

 last week in July, but young birds do not 

 make their appearance until later, and it is 

 not until the first week in October that they 

 have all come and gone. 



Another familiar visitor is the black- 

 breasted plover, which reaches the New 

 England seaboard about the middle of 

 May. This is the largest of the plovers, 

 and has been hunted until it is almost ex- 

 terminated. Besides these there are wil- 

 lets, curlew and snipe of several species, 

 some of which are with us all summer, not 

 only on the coast, but wherever there are 

 suitable feeding grounds throughout the 

 whole country. 



The birds of this family, in common with 

 ducks and geese, have a very wide mi- 

 gratory range, penetrating into the desolate 

 stillness of the marsh and lake region of 

 the Arctic North, where the short summer 

 stimulates a most prolific insect and vege- 

 table life. 



All the Arctic navigators report birds 

 more or less abundant in high latitudes. 

 Red phalaropes, ring plover, golden plover, 

 ptarmigan, sanderlings, snow buntings, 

 sandpipers and snipe are common above 

 seventy degrees north latitude; here they 

 build their nests and rear their young in 

 the solitudes of the northern extremity 

 of Hudson's Bay, as do also ducks, 

 geese, brant and innumerable other water 

 fowl. 



But the summer season in the great lone 

 land is a very short one. Life starts into 

 activity with a bound, and is arrested with 

 equal suddenness; but emerging from the 

 Arctic circle the shores of Labrador enjoy 

 a summer almost tropical, in which its 

 short-lived vegetation is forced with energy. 

 There are hundreds of miles of low land 

 along these coasts stocked with heathery, 

 berry-bearing shrubs, which afford a favor- 

 ite food for birds migrating southward at 

 the close of summer. The principal berry 

 is a deep purple color — almost black — not 

 unlike our blue berries, and described as 

 bear berries or curlew berries. 



Dr. Coues, writing of a noticeable effect 

 of feeding on these berries, observes that 

 after emerging from these regions the birds 

 have the "whole intestines, the vent, the 

 legs, the bill, the throat and even the 

 plumage more or less stained with the deep 

 purple juice." These marks are not even 

 obliterated at the time of their return south- 

 ward to Cape Cod. 



Fishermen and shipmasters who have 

 visited the coasts of Labrador describe the 

 birds as stringing down from the moun- 

 tains to the feeding grounds in myriads, 

 but the food supply is practically inex- 



