CHAPTER III 



IDENTIFYING BIRDS 



TO many uninitiated persons the difficulties of 

 identifying and recognizing birds seem insur- 

 mountable. " All I can see," said someone 

 to me, " is a speck, and then a streak of something 

 flying, and it is gone. They all look alike to me." 

 That is about the way I talked to a fisherman with 

 whom I was out thirty miles off Cape Cod, having 

 great times catching big codfish, haddock, hake, and 

 halibut, and watching Mother Carey's chickens and 

 shearwaters and the school of finback whales which 

 were spouting close around us. 



His eyes, though, were more for vessels than for 

 birds. The fleet of " shore " fishermen were scat- 

 tered about for miles over the " Rocky Grounds," in 

 about eighteen fathoms of water. Various craft 

 were dimly in sight or out of sight to me miles 

 off in the dim haze. 



" Hullo, if there ain't Rufe Nickerson 'way down 

 to the sou'west!" he would ejaculate. "He's got 

 a good breeze from the no'th-east. And there's Cy 

 Eldredge hove to, 'way inshore, getting some fish, 

 too ! " 



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