54 More Tales of the Birds 



sticky morsel of a mottled brown body, which 

 almost at once got its legs out of the shell, and 

 began to struggle out of the nest. Was ever 

 such a thing known before ? The old birds knew 

 not whether to laugh or cry, but they hustled him 

 back into the nest in double quick time, and made 

 him lie down till the sun and air should have 

 dried him up a little. Hard work the mother 

 had of it for the next day or two to keep that 

 little adventurer under her wing while the other 

 eggs were being hatched. When he was hungry 

 he would lie quiet under her wing ; but no sooner 

 had his father come with food for him than he 

 would utter his little pipe and struggle up for 

 another peep into the wide world. Terrible 

 stories his mother told him of infant Sandpipers 

 who had come to untimely ends from disobeying 

 their parents. 



One, she told him, had made off by himself 

 one day while his mother was attending to his 

 brothers and sisters, and before he had gone 

 many yards along the pleasant green sward, a 

 long red creature with horrible teeth and a tuft 

 to his tail, had come creeping, creeping, through 



