194 OUT WITH THE BIRDS 



tracts multitudes of insects, and thus provides 

 good feeding-grounds for the birds. There also 

 the grass is close-cropped and it is a good place 

 for a short excursion afield. The willet, yellow- 

 legs, black-bellied plover, pectoral sandpiper, 

 and others all like to slip away a little distance 

 from the water on hot, sunny days, and visit 

 their noisy cousin, the kildeer, upon the knolls. 

 This was where I found them, and down in the 

 shallows, their tiny relatives, the least sandpipers 

 and Northern phalaropes the latter just arrived 

 from the north were almost alone. 



There was but one way to reach the island. 

 This way was very primitive but sure: to wade 

 the intervening half mile of marsh. For though 

 it was the ninth of September, this year it had 

 been decreed that the shooting-season should not 

 open till the fifteenth of the month, and so there 

 were no shooters or boats handy. But the lack 

 of a boat was compensated a thousand-fold by 

 the birds of the place being in a measure un- 

 afraid and still in their natural environment of 

 the summer. In another week they would be 

 driven pell-mell out into the open and more in- 

 accessible places by the shot and shell of the 

 hunting fraternity. 



