45 A giant of beauty and grandeur 



the mud, and tearing our hair out by the roots in frustration, before 

 a true and logical picture emerged. Although the initial work of 

 Gunter and Hedgpeth gave us a list of the marine inhabitants of 

 the salt-flat ponds, as well as many suggestions as to the way these 

 tied into the whole environment, there were countless details still 

 to be investigated. For each month brought a change in conditions 

 and each season was different in some way from that which had 

 preceded it and that which followed. 



When he could get off from school (which was in Tivoli locally 

 pronounced Ty-vola or Ty-voler more than twenty miles from 

 camp) my young son stayed with me and helped with the work. 

 One such day in early January, I made this record in my notes: 



9:30 a.m. Finally managed to get our collecting equipment 

 reduced to pocket size, pulled on oversized hipboots on top of 

 our shoes, restrung the 50 ft. seine on new poles and, the whoop- 

 ers having moved, set out for the spot in Camp Pond where the 

 South Family fed last evening. Rain coming down steadily, but 

 only a little wind and the temperature up to 46 F. Another 

 family group is feeding in Camp Pond. They called, apparently 

 a duet, as we walked across our end of the pond, a half mile 

 away. The call was an alarm, a high bugle note, then a rolling 

 downward note, less prolonged than the first, and a third note 

 that was a repetition of the first. Pintails in the air, passing over 

 our heads. In the pond, just ahead of us, a single white pelican 

 and a scurrying flock of red-backed sandpipers. In the deep mud 

 we had trouble at once keeping our boots on, in spite of the 

 precaution of binding the feet with rope that was brought up 

 and pulled tightly around our ankles (eventually we abandoned 

 boots for sneakers). The recent norther and a steady northerly 

 breeze since yesterday has driven the water out of the pond 

 until the north shore is a bare mud flat extending more than 

 halfway across. In it we found whooper tracks (seven inches 

 across the tips of the outer toes) and the empty shells of blue 

 crabs. From our observations of last evening it appears that they 

 were feeding on crabs, as well as probing in the mud for some- 

 thing else (which proved later to be marine worms) . 



