A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES 199 



song sparrows appeared to have established 

 themselves along the banks of the creek 

 north of the city. I saw them nowhere else. 

 One need not go much beyond Virginia to 

 find these omnipresent New Englanders en- 

 dowed with all the attractions of rarity. 



Two or three spotted sandpipers about the 

 stony bed of the creek (a dribbling stream 

 at present, though within a month or so it 

 had carried away bridges and set houses 

 adrift), and a few killdeer plovers there and 

 in the dry fields beyond, were the only 

 water birds seen at Pulaski. One of the 

 killdeers gave me a pretty display of what 

 I took to be his antics as a wooer. I was 

 returning over the grassy hills, where on the 

 way out a colored boy's dog in advance of 

 me had stirred up several killdeers, when 

 suddenly I heard a strange humming noise, 

 — a sort of double-tonguing, I called it to 

 myself, — and very soon recognized in it, as 

 I thought, something of the killdeer's vocal 

 quality. Sure enough, as I drew near the 

 place I found the fellow in the midst of a 

 real lover's ecstasy ; his tail straight in the 

 air, fully spread (the value of the bright 

 cinnamon-colored rump and tail feathers 



