224 WAKE-ROBIN 



more common and abundant species are field-birds, 

 and entire strangers to deep forests ? 



In Europe some birds have become almost domes- 

 ticated, like the house sparrow; and in our own 

 country the cliff swallow seems to have entirely 

 abandoned ledges and shelving rocks, as a place to 

 nest, for the eaves and projections of farm and 

 other outbuildings. 



After one has made the acquaintance of most of 

 the land-birds, there remain the seashore and its 

 treasures. How little one knows of the aquatic 

 fowls, even after reading carefully the best authori- 

 ties, was recently forced home to my mind by the 

 following circumstance: I was spending a vacation 

 in the interior of New York, when one day a 

 stranger alighted before the house, and with a cigar 

 box in his hand approached me as I sat in the door- 

 way. I was about to say that he would waste his 

 time in recommending his cigars to me, as I never 

 smoked, when he said that, hearing I knew some- 

 thing about birds, he had brought me one which 

 had been picked up a few hours before in a hay- 

 field near the village, and which was a stranger to 

 all who had seen it. As he began to undo the box 

 I expected to see some of our own rarer birds, per- 

 haps the rose-breasted grosbeak or Bohemian chat- 

 terer. Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when 

 I beheld instead a swallow- shaped bird, quite as 

 large as a pigeon, with forked tail, glossy black 

 above and snow-white beneath. Its parti- webbed 

 feet, and its long graceful wings, at a glance told 



