A Recent Ramble. 85 



Hearing these sand-pipers everywhere along 

 shore, I landed by a huge uprooted tree, and 

 watched them as they came and went. How 

 aptly they have caught the motion of the rippling 

 water, and never venture more than to wet their 

 feet ! Their teetering motion is clearly protective 

 here, where the pebbles are large and nowhere is 

 the sand free from rubbish. Scan the shore as 

 closely as one may, these birds are part and parcel 

 of the little waves, and only at long intervals 

 stand out in bold relief; appearing so suddenly 

 that only emergence from the water seemed pos- 

 sible, as spring-tide swallows were supposed to 

 do in olden time, a belief, by the bye, not yet 

 extinct. 



It needs but a few minutes for sand-pipers to 

 gain confidence, and soon they came within a few 

 feet of the boat. Their eyes had all the merry 

 glitter of the sunlit river. If they do not laugh, 

 these birds do sing, for their clear voices are melo- 

 dious by merit of the happiness that prompts each 

 utterance. There was not to-day, and never is, a 

 trace of ill humor about them, and they bow and 

 bob even more when two or three are gathered 



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