V ° 1- 1920 CVI1 ] Farley, Sandpipers at Plymouth, Mass. 79 



feed when the flats had become sufficiently exposed; and Gulls 

 dropping mussels. Snow Buntings were on the beach and in the 

 beach grass. 



The week of January 14 was a week of winter weather — cool or 

 cold but no storm. A little snow fell on the night of the 20th so 

 that I found it lying thinly on the sand of the beach on the follow- 

 ing morning. " The tide was falling, leaving the shore with a thin 

 veneer of ice. There was ice over everything in fact — from 

 high-water mark down to the gently receding water. And back of 

 the ice lay the fine snow on the sand of the upper beach. Every- 

 where there were floating bits of ice in the water on the bay side 

 (outer side) of the beach, and farther out there were floes — big 

 and little — going fast out to sea on the swift current running from 

 the Inner Harbor. Seals lay on this floating ice — ' as cool as you 

 please.' It was altogether a wintry scene. Yet it was not a cold 

 morning. In the same place as on the 14th where the beach broad- 

 ens very much at low water saw the usual three Sanderlings, and 

 with them a Red-backed Sandpiper. They seemed to mind not at 

 all the snow on the sand. They were not shy, and to avoid me 

 they would run (up to the last moment) rather than fly. They 

 were thus more fearless than during the fall flight. The Red- 

 backed Sandpiper was quite tame — or fearless. I could get within 

 a few feet of him. At times he waded belly-deep in the ice-cold 

 water, and was busily engaged in picking in the shallow water. I 

 could not see what he was eating, although he may have been prob- 

 ing. The tide finally fell so that there was fresh green eel grass on 

 the beach, but earlier in the forenoon the icy sand seemed to have 

 no food. 



"Other forms of life typical of the beach on this January morn- 

 ing were the thousands of ducks in the Inner Harbor where there 

 were practically no flats as yet exposed. Many of the fowl were 

 Black Ducks floating in the water (which grew shallower every 

 minute) over the flats which would finally be exposed. There were 

 many Whistlers — outside among the ice floes and inside the beach 

 and flying around the Spindle in and out of the Inner Harbor. 

 Throughout the forenoon the air was full of their melodious whist- 

 ling. Noted many handsome, showy, black and white old drakes. 

 There were many, also, of the seal-brown-headed females. There 



