THE SHORE PATROL 
21 I 
the wind was fresh from the northeast and the Golden Plovers 
arrived in good numbers, and were common during the 
remaining week of my stay. At first all were adults, with dark 
breasts, but on the fifteenth and afterwards there were more 
and more of the pale-bellied young. They fed preferably on 
the marshes or on any grass-land near the sea, but also were 
often seen along the edge of the inlet, wading along its sandy 
margins. 
Somehow, the Golden Plover appeals to me as the finest 
of the shore-birds. It has a good name, it is a beautiful bird, 
and is all the more attractive for the romantic interest attach¬ 
ing to its wonderful migration and its fortuitous appearances 
on our shores. No bird has more splendid powers of flight. 
How I love to watch the varied evolutions of its swift squad¬ 
rons, now high in air, now low over the flats, wheeling to the 
stirring, wild music of mellow, whistled calls! Then they 
suddenly alight in the short grass, where they scatter out in 
pursuit of grasshoppers or other insect prey, not forgetting 
their true plover dignity as they walk sedately about or stand 
erect, like Robins listening for the worm. 
On the eighteenth the first of the tardy host of Red-backed 
Sandpipers — sometimes called “ Frost-birds ” —arrived, and 
previously, on the fifth and sixth, I made my first acquaint¬ 
ance with the Buff-breasted Sandpiper, — a flock of a dozen 
flying along the beach and a single one feeding on the inlet 
flats. 
Birds were now pouring in, — scoters and other sea-ducks 
had begun to fly, jaegers were out at sea in swarms, hawks of 
various sorts were migrating, with many Northern land-birds 
among the spruces, —and it seemed hard to pack my belong¬ 
ings and start off, amid the first early snow-squall, for tame 
and effete civilization! 
On Sunday evening, the night before I left, I strolled down 
