100 EVERYDAY BIRDS 
No, they are not here, and even as I write I 
seem to see the little family on their way to the. 
far south. They are making the journey by easy 
stages, I hope— flitting from flower-bed to flower- 
bed, now in Connecticut, now in New Jersey, and 
so on through Pennsylvania and the Southern 
States. Will they cross the water to the West 
Indies, as some of their kind are said to do? or, 
less adventurous, will they keep straight on to 
some mountain-side in Costa Rica, or even in 
Brazil? I should be sorry to believe that the 
parent birds took their departure first, leaving 
the twin children to find their way after them as 
best they could — as those who have paid most 
attention to such matters assure us that many of 
our birds are in the habit of domg. But how- 
ever they go, and wherever they end their long 
journey, may wind and weather be favorable, and 
old and young alike return, after the winter is 
over, to build other nests here in their native 
New England. 
This passing of birds back and forth, a prand 
semi-annual tide, is to me a thing of an geD I 
think of the millions of sandpipers and plovers 
which for two months (it is now late in Septem- 
ber) have been pouring southward along the sea- 
coast. Some of them passed here on their way 
north no longer ago than the last days of May. 
