A DAY ON THE BAY SHORE. 



E have chosen a day for our 

 excursion when the tide is 

 low in the morning, and have 

 made an early start to see 

 what the birds are about upon the mud- 

 flats. Imagine the scene. We are 

 upon the eastern shore of San Francisco 

 Bay, a few miles north of Oakland. 

 The country is low and rolling, grad- 

 ually swelling back toward the base of 

 the Berkeley Hills. Way off across 

 the water rises Tamalpais, with its famil- 

 iar, ever present contour against the 

 sky ; but what most concerns us is the 

 great stretch of mud-flat, black, slimy 

 and oozing from the receding tide, with 

 a crowd of shore birds thronging upon 

 it to feed. Here and there in the pools 



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