FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



half-hour. I felt at its conclusion as a man does 

 after a peculiarly agreeable neighborly call. My 

 spirit was refreshed. Good luck, say I, to all 

 turnstones. May theirs be always a full table. I 

 wish men did not find it amusing to kill them ; 

 but, alas ! men will be men, and savagery, filter- 

 ing down from long lines of barbarous, skin-clad 

 ancestors, is slow in dying. 



Our faithful Santa Barbara fellow citizen, the 

 great blue heron, may be seen any day standing 

 motionless, a tall, gaunt, solitary figure, out on 

 the kelp, half a mile or so from land ; but I have 

 only once in a long while detected him on the 

 beach. There, knee-deep in the surf, leaning 

 seaward, he is the very picture of fisherman's 

 patience and slow luck. My own patience has 

 never lasted long enough to see him catch any- 

 thing. 



At the opposite extreme of size are the little 

 snowy plovers, which often join the sanderlings 

 in their merry race with the breakers. 



The knot, which is known in books, no doubt 

 correctly, as peculiarly a beach-bird, I have 

 never seen there. The two examples that I have 

 had the unexpected fortune to find in the Santa 

 Barbara neighborhood, both autumnal beauties 

 in lovely clear gray and white, were feeding on 

 muddy flats. One of them (the first one), which I 

 40 



