Song Birds and Water Fowl 
clumsy a complication of affairs as one ever 
finds in nature. 
In the salt marshes, sea-side sparrows were 
singing—my first view and hearing of them. 
Their strain is almost the lowest in the scale of 
song, and yet it is distinctly a song, and nota 
reiterated call note. One of them perched ona 
low bush within a few feet of me, and indulged 
for several minutes in his soft soliloquy, the 
first part of the chant resembling the conk-a-rée 
of a minute red-winged blackbird, and tipped 
off with the snarl of a microscopic catbird. 
There was certainly a genuine impulse of song 
in his heart; and he seemed as happy in his 
puny efforts as the most gifted of his race. All 
about on the marshes the wild, vague note of 
the sandpipers could be heard, whose discov- 
ery, when they keep still in the grass, rivals the 
needle-in-the-haymow problem. Having their 
nests in this seclusion, they now and then pass 
over in small parties to the ocean’s edge to feed, 
lodging in the marsh, and dining on the beach. 
& 
One of my excursions in search of water fowl 
was nothing but a ‘‘ comedy of errors,’’ from 
beginning toend. Early in June I took the 
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