THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS. 



PELICANS. 



" The wondrous, beautiful prairies, 



Billowy waves of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, 

 Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. 

 Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and the elk and the roebuck ; 

 Over them wandered the wolves and herds of riderless horses ; 

 Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel ; 

 Over them wandered the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, 

 Staining the desert with blood ; and above their terrible war-trails 

 Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, 

 Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, 

 By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens." 



HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, Evangeline. 



\ 

 IF you were to ask me the best place in the world to study 



sea birds, I would tell you to go to our Western plains and 

 prairies. It is strange, but true, that nowhere else can one find 

 as many kinds of water-birds as in the interior of the country. 

 Kare ducks, found on the Maine coast only in winter, breed 

 among the Rocky Mountains; the little phalaropes that we 

 met floating off Grand Manan, flock more abundantly to the 

 prairies ; the cormorant of the North builds her nest among the 

 inland lakes beside the pelican of the South; and swans, 

 cranes, plovers, sandpipers, terns, and sea-gulls breed in vast 

 numbers about all the little ponds of water that dot the 

 prairie. Birds that never mingle upon the coasts dwell there 

 side by side. 



It is a pretty sight to see their white plumage shining about 

 the blue pools, the green uneven prairie behind. How shall I 



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