70 BEACH GRASS 



hard beach but their occasional dabs or probings, 

 irregularly scattered in the sand. Sandpipers 

 keep their heads down and probe the sand system- 

 atically; plovers run about with their heads up 

 and dab here and there. Yellow-legs in the 

 marsh keep their heads up and dab like plovers. 

 In the case of the black-bellied plover, these dabs 

 often show a partly opened bill. 



I have found the tracks of seals on Ipswich bar, 

 — great grooves and depressions and flipper- 

 marks. The seal still flourishes here, and as re- 

 cently as December, 1919, I counted on the bar 

 seventy-flve of these great animals taking their 

 siestas. It is always a delight to watch these 

 wild creatures, and their presence and numbers 

 when pointed out to the stranger is always the oc- 

 casion for surprise. Thoreau in his "Cape Cod" 

 says : "The Boston papers had never told me that 

 there were seals in the harbor. I had always as- 

 sociated these with the Esquimaux and other out- 

 landish people. Yet from the parlor windows 

 all along the coast you may see families of them 

 sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me 

 as mermen would be." 



