annoyinjj habit of roarinj; around municipal Iniildings all nisht 

 in our cities. In the spring all manner of little warblers come 

 through on their way north, and there can hardly be more 

 vividly colored creatures than some of these The best that 

 modern color printing provides can in no way reproduce the 

 brilliance of the contrasting blacks, whites, and above all the 

 yellows of their plumage But most ubiquitous are the sparrows 

 that typify the landward side of this province. They come in all 

 manner of varieties that chip, chirp, and pip, and also in some 

 cases sing most exquisitely, but they are modest little folk, 

 hopping about in and under things and pecking away at their 

 tiny seed foods almost unseen. 



Of the shore birds there are a multitude. Even to do them the 

 most rudimentary justice would call for a large volume. There 

 are the dull-coated Clapper Rails that lurk in small patches of 

 reeds and drive one frantic by their elusive "clapping": there 

 are Great Blue Herons, and Night Herons, and Egrets that stand 

 about in shallow waters and just look; there are Double-crested 

 Cormorants that like to go fishing on the sea but spend a lot of 

 time sitting in pairs on chosen bare brandies over creeks: and 

 there is even the Anhinga or Snakebird. a rather colorful 

 creature with dieckered black and white wings and a neck like 

 that of a snake, armed with a long, thin bill that is capable of 

 destroying an eye if held too close. But it is when we get among 

 the ducks and their kind that we really come upon the avian 

 principals of this region. 



Most spectacular is perhaps the Greater Snow Goose, a glo- 

 rious creature that passes over the heads of sleeping New York- 

 ers twice yearly, to the number of some 100.000. but absolutely 

 unbeknownst to them. It is a great white bird with black wing 

 tips that was once almost exterminated. It breeds on marshy 

 lagoons, in June, in western Greenland. Baffin and Ellesmere 

 Lands, and on Bylot Island, and winters for the most part on Pea 

 Island (now a national wildlife refuge on Cape Hatteras). but 

 some of them settle down for the winter in the salt marshes of 

 Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. These birds have an 

 assembly point at St. Joachim on the St. Lawrence River, where 

 they gather eadi year in the fall until wintry winds send them 

 off to the south. They are delightful creatures in many respects. 

 They mate for life and are devoted congeners. If the mother dies 

 while eggs are setting or goslings are still in the nest, the father 

 takes over and raises them with infinite patience and care. There 

 is a delightful anecdote by Langdon Gibson, ornithologist on the 

 1891 Peary Greenland Expedition: he relates that after he had 

 accidentally killed a nesting female, he was. on passing through 

 the same valley some time later, "happy to see the male proudly 

 marching at the head of his family of six at least ten miles from 

 the nest." The Greater Snow Goose must not be confused with 

 the Lesser, which nests in the northwestern part of the continent 

 and in northern Asia and whidi uses the Pacific and Mississippi 

 flyways to migrate. There come here also countless Brant Geese 

 and the ubiquitous Canada Geese, and occasionally a stray Blue 

 Goose. The ducks are too numerous to recount in detail, apart 

 from the common but magnificently proud Mallards with their 

 discrete lady-folk. There is a vast literature on the ducks, most 

 of it abundantly interesting as well as informative. 



But it is surely the true sea birds that, above all, lend the 

 distinctive flavor to this province. It may sound ridiculous to 

 inlanders and to the natives of other coasts, but to a northerner, 

 born amidst the wailing winds and drifting mists of the colder 

 North Atlantic, the mewings. anguished cries, and defiant shouts 

 of the larger gulls is not only music but somehow a symbol of 

 all life and of its contentious struggle. Along the sandy wastes 



of Nantucket Island and Cape Cod. all along siiuthcm Long 

 Island even to the human conglomeration of Brooklyn, and again 

 from Sandy Hook to Cape Hatteras. the Herring Cull and the 

 Black-backed Gull howl and yell and mew and scream, while 

 the smaller gulls laugh a bit, and the terns chink away at the 

 passing wind, ever flapping up and down like jointed kites but 

 very seldom going anywhere in those winds, and always looking, 

 looking downward in the ceaseless search for iheir agile food. 

 The sounds of all of these waft in to you on land by night and 

 day, rain or shine, and even out of the dense blankets of noisily 

 silent mists that so often enshroud this coast. They proclaim 

 everlastingly that the raucous struggle for life goes on and thai 

 tomorrow the same gulls will be still sailing, floating, swooping, 

 fighting, gliding, and living. 



There is a great difference between the various major parts 

 of this province, as we have already said. This is due to several 

 factors. The first is that the great icecap on its last 'advance' 

 south just reached the line that divides this province from 

 Appaladiia. This mile-high bulldozer brought with it inesti- 

 mable tons of boulders including gravel, chewed-up rock. sand, 

 silt, and dust and huge rodcs called erratics. There is one of 

 these behind a large department store in Manhasset. Long Island, 

 that was thus brought all the way from Canada by the ice and 

 is estimated to weigh over a hundred tons. This it spewed forth 

 from its margin in the form of moraines and boulder drifts. The 

 whole north coast of Long Island is formed by a ridge of such 

 material. Much of Nantucket, some of Cape Cod, and parts of 

 Martha's Vineyard are also so littered. This gives these areas a 

 solidity not found in the area from Sandy Hook to Cape Hatteras. 

 In the latter, the land is composed of low. slightly rolling sand 

 hills, varying from glistening white to a rich red (notably east of 

 Washington). These sand hills are clad with scattered gnarled 

 pines and hollies, and there are intervening estuaries with 

 endlessly proliferating tributaries and side creeks filled with 

 mud and reeds. Along the whole coast the interminable sand 

 dunes with their offshore sandspits and shingle beds continue. 



The sands form most glorious phenomena on Nantudcet 

 Island and on Long Island from Montauk to the Rockaways. 

 and all down the rest of the coast to Hatteras. while they extend 

 south beyond that to Cape Remain and resume again in a 

 slightly different form in Georgia. Sometimes they form a steep, 

 tall cliff, as along outer Nantucket; sometimes they stretdi for 

 miles inland as flat, wind-blown deserts. Usually they have, 

 backing them up to landward, great marshy lagoons filled with 

 reeds. Only in a few places do they mardi directly and quickly 

 into grass-covered ridges stippled with pines. 



Within the compass of this province as a whole there is too 

 much to be seen in an average lifetime. It is enormously varied, 

 and. where modern man has not blighted it. it has an ineffable 

 charm. But always, whether the summer sun shines bright, a 

 frosty winter sun sparkles over it. or it is shrouded in gray scud, 

 half-hidden in rolling mists, or lashed by a cyclonic wind, it has 

 a certain air of desolation about it. There are flower-carpeted 

 sandy acres and dense tall blueberry scrubs on Nantucket, piny 

 dunes with shoreward-leaning clumps of grass on Cape Cod. and 

 steep grassy downs facing the ocean on Martha's Vineyard. The 

 grim pine barrens of farther south and the muddy estuaries and 

 sand-blown coastal strips are the same. They have neither the 

 roaring boisterousness of the more northern rocky coasts with 

 their Valkyrian strength, nor the sun-drendied pallidity of their 

 more southern counterparts. The Northeast Coastal Fringe Prov- 

 ince lies athwart and between the North and the South, and it 

 is unique. 



