126 
WILD WINGS 
platforms of dry stems, built in tussocks just above the 
reach of the tides which flow up all over the marsh, and were 
canopied over by the grass in a very pretty manner. At one 
time I caught sight of a little black young rail, which led me 
a sorry chase over a soft mud-flat, greatly to the detriment of 
my personal appearance. I had almost caught it, I thought, 
when suddenly, as though by magic, it faded from my sight 
amid a few sparse blades of marsh grass. Oh ! but I was 
thirsty that day ! It was blazing hot, and the marsh seemed 
like a furnace. After drinking the last of the precious water, 
I found some relief in a dijD in the ocean. Then came an 
eight-mile tramp. Next day the keeper provided me with a 
horse and tij^cart for the same jaunt. This time I took plenty 
of water, but, in an evil hour, I made the horse trot upon 
the apparently smooth sand-beach. Everything on board the 
springless cart began to leap into the air. A hole was 
chipped in the bottle, and nearly all the water had leaked out 
ere I knew it. Only about half a pint was saved by holding 
the wreck of the bottle in my hand as I drove, and I had 
another thirsty dav of it. 
The numerous Laughing Gulls were not nesting in these 
particular marshes, and to locate them I scoured the bays and 
marshes far and near in a sail-boat with the keeper. Away 
out near the entrance of Chesa]:)eake Bav lie a group of small 
islands, upon one of which is a U. .S. quarantine station, 
about as isolated a location as one could well find. Here, 
ujDon the wide flats, were Laughing CtuIIs by the hundreds, 
consorting with Black Skimmers and Common Terns. But 
what amazed me most, as I landed upon a low sand-liar of 
an island, was to find scores and scores of the Black Tern, 
in full breeding plumage, hovering overhead, darting down 
at us, and acting exactlv as thev do out in the sloughs of 
North Dakota when one approaches their nests. The strange 
