386 SHORE BIRDS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 
Numenius Hudsonius—Hudson’s curlew. 
Numenius borealis—Esquimaux curlew. 
I have not mentioned in this list Schinze’s sand piper, although 
my notes give him at Halifax, August, 1864. I have no distinct 
recollection of the bird, or of seeing Dunlin’s, an enlarged copy 
of it, in Nova Scotia. It is very rare here or not a true species. 
I think there is Dunlin immature bird in the Halifax Museum. 
Of all the shore birds that grace our landscape, as I have before 
said, the peeps are the most pleasing. The great Bay of Fundy 
tide that has rushed in alinost cataract force through the oppos- 
sing traps in the gut, now expanded in the Basin fills to the 
utmost brim with a power though unseen yet quite as great, 
every rushy estuary, and every silver sand flat of the great basin. 
All is steeped in one bright glancing and quivering calm. The 
peeps are lining the edges of the flats waiting for the ebb. The 
great herons have come from their heronry twenty or thirty miles 
on the borders of a tangled spruce lake, waiting for what the ebb 
may leave them. The barking, and rising and falling of the 
crows, and squeaking of the herons from their roosts on the over- 
hanging trees tells that the hawk (F. Columbarius), like a 
privateer, is backing and filling and waiting his ebb, too near 
them. These sights and sounds come down upon you as the first 
soft ebb floats your canoe down the bay. If you are out pot 
shooting, the noiseless current floats you down towards the flats, 
now rapidly showing out of water, and covered by thousands in- 
numerable of creeping forms. The whole host, scared by your 
approaching canoe, with a sharp whistle rise, stretch landward a 
few rods, then rise in the air and open into a white sparkling 
cloud, reflecting the bright sunbeams. Now is your time; both 
barrels of your breech loader, and the mitraille of mustard seed 
shot cover the water around with the dead and dying. To 
slowly pick up the dead and secure the living you turn home- 
wards. From twenty-five to thirty birds, ring necks and plover 
of several species, are enough to vex your cook and serve for a 
pot-pie. Butif you are out fora pic-nic, and stowed beneath the 
bear robes, on the very bottom of your canoe, are your wife and 
little ones, and camp kettles and tea, bread, milk and sugar, and 
