FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



getting between the sheets. What long hours 

 of peaceful slumber you would enjoy ! Sleeping or 

 waking, even if you are a trained athlete, I would 

 not give you any great length of time in which 

 to maintain the attitude, to say nothing of find- 

 ing it conducive to repose. 



As for running on one leg, that, so far as I 

 know, is a trick peculiar to sanderlings. As well 

 as I can recall, I have never found any other 

 kind of bird attempting it ; except of course, dis- 

 abled individuals, which show plainly enough by 

 their awkwardness that their one-legged perform- 

 ances, such as they are, are matters of painful 

 necessity. 



Whether sanderlings have the happiness to 

 feel a comfortable touch of pride in this singu- 

 larity of theirs is a question to be left for such 

 as possess a better, more instinctive, knowledge 

 than I am favored with as to what goes on inside 

 of fur and feathers. 



Sanderlings as a rule feed on the beach and 

 nowhere else ; but I once knew a small flock to 

 remain for a week or two in a certain part of the 

 Estero. " Those crazy sanderlings " an orni- 

 thological friend of mine called them, seeing 

 them so persistently out of their natural sur- 

 roundings. For myself, I found it difficult at first 

 to feel sure that they were sanderlings. For aught 

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