554 The Water-fowl Family 



ashy blue is one of the finest judges of human 

 nature, and rarely lapses into one of those fits of 

 idiocy that sometimes make even the turkey fall 

 an easy victim to the tenderfoot. Circling near 

 midday in the topmost blue, and sending down 

 at intervals a long, vibrating note almost as pene- 

 trating and hard to locate as the rippling music 

 that falls from the upland plover, he seems to be- 

 long only to the sky. Equally hopeless seems the 

 attempt to get a shot when he starts on his travels. 

 High in air he still floats along, disdaining all 

 country where fences and houses show elbow- 

 room growing scarce. A true lover of the wild 

 and free, he even scorns country still wild enough 

 for the goose and, trusting to his untiring wing, 

 will go hungry for another five hundred miles to 

 enjoy the grand sweep of some plain too big for 

 man to mar. When the sand-hill crane is travel- 

 ling in flocks of fifty to a hundred and fifty or 

 more, with flock after flock mingling its strange 

 call with one just passing over, the man who 

 thought it a common heron is apt to find a string 

 within tuned in unison with that wild tremolo. 

 His anxiety to secure one is tripled when he sees 

 band after band on the sunlit plain, some stand- 

 ing on the flowery knolls, others strolling across 

 the greener swales, with others feeding where the 

 plain rolls broad and free. Such was a common 

 sight in California in winter up to a few years ago. 



