Water Fowl 59 



If you are in good luck, while waiting you may see 

 the least sandpiper, the avocet, and that living colour- 

 scheme the gallinule creeping in and out among the tall 

 reeds. In Florida I have often kept this bird as a pet, 

 it being very amenable to domestication. Few birds 

 have a more beautiful or more expressive eye than this 

 gentle creature. 



If the sportsman finds some section of the country 

 not a preserve and unfrequented, he will see many old 

 friends of the East. A few years ago I could count 

 scores of herons in the country back of Playa del Rey, 

 splashes of white against the green ; and once I hunted 

 a flock of the snowy herons for hours in this lagoon. I 

 crept over the dunes, edging my way along, and watched 

 them feeding around a little island in the swamp, with 

 sentinels posted. But the finest bird is the sand-hill 

 crane that may be seen in the Centinela hills, and I 

 have seen it in the Puente hills south of Pasadena. 

 This is the bird that makes the best displays spring 

 and fall along the Sierra Madre. Wandering along 

 the low region that receives the seepage of the hills 

 you may see the spotted sandpiper, the black-bellied 

 plover, and in the wet meadows, where the lush alfalfa 

 stands, hear the flute-like cry of the killdeer with its 

 ventriloquistic quality coming down the wind. The 

 mountain and snowy plover are not strangers ; and on 

 the highlands or mesas, a few miles from the sea, the 

 long-billed curlew is not uncommon. I located a large 

 flock of these birds on the mesa a mile back from the 



