BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 291 



foot of the dunes. The sea bellows and roars. It pounds 

 the shifting sands until the very earth trembles with the 

 impact, and the salt spray, blown from the wave crests, drifts 

 in clouds across the beach. The flotsam and jetsam of the 

 sea are tossed and washed upon the beach amid the froth and 

 spume; bits of rockweed, seaweed, sponge, cork, bamboo and 

 driftwood, floating wreckage which was once a part of the hull 

 or cargo of some ship overwhelmed at sea or wrecked on the 

 treacherous sands, — all are cast high on the sands or washed 

 back by the returning wave. Many small forms of marine 

 life are torn from their ocean bed and thrown upon the beach. 



Here the Httle Sanderlings are in their element. With 

 nimble, ready step they follow the back-wash down and re- 

 treat before the rush of the incoming wave. Sometimes in 

 their eager pursuit of some unusually tempting morsel they 

 run so far down the beach that they are met by the returning 

 surge coming too fast for their little flying feet to escape its 

 overwhelming rush. Then with ready wings they mount and 

 flutter beyond its reach. If disturbed they rise and gather 

 into a rather compact flock, then, wheeling out over the surf, 

 they fly up or down the beach, now fluttering low in a great 

 sea hollow, now skimming the crest of a foaming breaker, soon 

 to alight again on the sands. 



The Sanderling is well-named "Beach-bird," for in all 

 countries the beach is its habitat and the sea its refuge. It 

 seeks not only the outer shore, where the surf continually 

 roars, but also the strand of the quiet bay, where the swell 

 gently washes on sunny sands. In August, when the water 

 is low in the ponds and lakes of the interior, it may be found 

 there sometimes along the exposed bars or beaches. 



Since the days when Morton shot between four and five 

 dozen "sanderlins" "at one shoot," near his home at Merry- 

 mount, the numbers of this bird have not fallen oft' quite so 

 much, perhaps, as those of most of the other shore birds. The 

 following abridged extracts give some idea of its decrease in 

 numbers : Extremely abundant on coast in autumn and spring 

 from Maine to Florida (Audubon, 1835). Occurs on coast in 

 smafl numbers in May, again in large flocks about middle of 



