A First Glance at the Birds, 



handful plucked from the back — a man- 

 gled corpse cast aside in the marsh and 

 a nestful of babies crying for the fond 

 mother who will never return to them. 

 It takes but a day of anguish and they 

 are dead; and this is the price paid for 

 the little plumes that wave airily in the 

 bonnets of our maidens and matrons. 

 Methinks no woman ought to be light- 

 hearted adorned with such mementoes 

 of tragedy, yet the story has been often 

 told and the decorations are still worn. 

 Let us hurry by the other marsh and 

 shore birds, interesting though they 

 be — the rails (of which some five species 

 are found here), the coots or mud-hens, 

 as they are called by hunters, the won- 

 derful little phaUropes, which look so 

 much like sandpipers and yet swim in- 

 stead of wade, the avocets and the stilts, 

 the dainty sandpipers, which flash their 

 snowy breasts in the sun as flocks 

 wheel past us flying to their feeding 

 ground on the mud-flats, the curlews, the 

 plovers and killdeers of our upland fields 

 26 



