204 WILD WINGS 



thick grass of the meadows, and certain others are partial to 

 marshes, dry pasture, or prairie, the decided preference of the 

 Order is for the margin where land and water meet, whether 

 it be by ocean, river, lake, or pool. They are waders by nature 

 and generally by practice, and there is not one but what at 

 times dabbles in margins, that, unlike some margins in human 

 affairs, provide an unfailing sustenance, with their abounding 

 forms of small animal life. 



Many a sojourn by the sea has been brightened for me by 

 the presence of the shore-birds. They are nature's contribu- 

 tion toward filling a vacuum. Every other sort of locality 

 forest, pasture, prairie, mountain, swamp, and ocean has 

 its peculiar birds, and so has, therefore, the shore. I love 

 to sit on the beach and see a flock of sandpipers racing 

 nimbly after the retreating wave, and back again when it 

 returns, pattering along the strand and picking up the tiny 

 bits of food, invisible to coarse human sight. They are not 

 ordinarily very shy, and, by hiding a little, or sitting quite 

 still, I have often watched their pretty motions from within 

 a few feet. Then, perhaps, they see that they are observed, 

 and off they go with quick, darting flight and mellow twit- 

 terings, to take a circuit out over the water, and return to 

 alight a few hundred feet farther along. Though small, 

 they are strong of flight, and that they seek out the distant, 

 mysterious North for their nesting adds to their charm. 



A few species spend their summers with us and raise 

 their young, but, possessing vigorous powers of flight, and 

 sought after by man for food, most of them wing their way 

 to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, passing hurriedly by us in 

 the spring, and returning more leisurely in the fall. On the 

 Atlantic coast north of Virginia comparatively few are now 

 found in the spring flight, during May ; the great majority 

 pass us out to sea or go up through the interior, notably 



