AN OCTOBER DIARY. 297 



comes a land-bird, if it chooses, without apparent effort, 

 and is cheerful withal. I have seen it perch upon fences 

 and tops of dead trees with all the grace and ease of a 

 hawk, and thread its way, in and out, among tangled 

 bushes, with all the skill of a sparrow-hunting shrike. 

 Then, suddenly longing for its old-time haunts, it would 

 rise to a considerable height, and with steady, snipelike 

 flight, wend its way to the nearest water, and straight- 

 way become as aquatic as any of its cousins. I am not 

 quite sure where I better like to see these birds, in the 

 upland or on the meadow. Beautiful anywhere, at ease 

 under all circumstances, there is pleasure in watching 

 them wherever they may be. They lend a charm to the 

 river-shore, the weedy banks of creeks, or wooded slopes 

 that guard the forest brooks; but with greater interest, 

 perhaps, do I watch them as they curve, with pendent, 

 pointed wings, over upland fields, skimming the waving 

 grain with the same grace that marks their progress 

 over rippling waters. 



As there are some inland birds that have become es- 

 sentially aquatic in their habits, so this little sandpiper 

 is now more than half a land-bird. It offers us an ad- 

 mirable opportunity for studying that profoundest of all 

 matters in biology, the origin and instability of habits ; 

 for these, like specific differences, cannot be asserted as 

 fixed. No bird, no creature, be it higher or lower, but is 

 something different from its ancestors of a few centuries 

 ago. During the past summer, as for ten years past, a 

 pair of these sandpipers have nested in a weedy corner 

 of a dusty field, and have been as truly land-birds as 

 the song-sparrows, with which they were much asso- 



13* 



