294 TowNSEND, Bird Genealogy. [july 



and partly hop with wings extended toward a Robin that was 

 digging worms near by, making the Robin flesert the spot on which 

 the Crackle then dug. 



But the most interesting development of the Grackle, one that 

 shows its great adaptability and intelligence, is a habit it has of 

 picking up food from the water, after the manner of the Herring 

 Gull. A Grackle will hover close to the water its head to the wind, 

 and then suddenly drop, and with its bill pick up from the surface 

 some morsel as gracefully as a Gull. This they do at times with- 

 out wetting their plumage; at other times the bill, feet and tail 

 are immersed, while I once saw a Grackle splash his whole body 

 into the water and entirely immerse his head, to emerge without 

 difficulty, carrying in his bill what appeared to be a small silvery 

 fish. I have seen them after sailing and hovering over the water 

 in a high wind with the spray dashing about them, skilfully pick 

 up food from the tops of the waves. 



It is easy to picture an island community of Grackles becoming 

 more and more addicted to a maritime life, owing perhaps to the 

 shrinking of their terrestrial food supply due to a change of climate 

 or to land subsidence. Would not these habits become in time 

 as much inherited as are similar habits in the Gulls? Or, to put 

 the question in another way, were not the inherited traits of the 

 Gulls originally acquired? 



The Ipswich Sparrow is the only strictly dune dweller among the 

 birds. Its summer home is on Sable Island, an island of sand dunes 

 off Nova Scotia, and it spends its winters along the sandy portions 

 of the Atlantic coast. It is evidently a near relation of the Savan- 

 nah Sparrow, w^hich is somewhat smaller and darker, and lives 

 chiefly in marshes and open fields from Labrador to New Jersey. 

 As the glaciers receded we can picture the gradual pushing north 

 of the Savannah Sparrows, and their extension to the great sandy 

 wastes that fringed the coast for miles. As the land sank and the 

 waters rose restricting these regions of sand, the struggle for life 

 among the clan that preferred the sand dunes must have been an 

 intense one, and it is probable that the larger and stronger birds, 

 as well as those that more nearl}^ matched in color their surround- 

 ings were the more likely to survive. Isolation from the main 

 land finally aided in the work, and at last a distinctly new species 



