THE SEA BIRDS OF THE PLAINS. 59 



to be carried to market for use in sugar refining. In a few 

 years these too will have vanished. 



Everywhere over the prairies near or far, in all the little 

 hollows, are pools of water. Some are alkaline and unwhole- 

 some to drink ; some are salt, and there grow about them 

 the same plants that you pick by the sea-shore; some are 

 fresh, with little streams flowing in and out. About the first 

 two is generally a whitish rim of salt or soda left by the evap- 

 oration of the water ; the fresh-water pools are oftener edged 

 with water plants and rushes. 



Here the sea birds congregate. Great pelicans spread their 

 broad pinions in graceful, flight or sit in rows with their bills 

 upon their breasts meditating over a good meal. The gulls fly 

 swiftly back and forth, with a strong rowing motion; terns 

 clip past in sharp zigzags, like those of the dragon-flies they 

 follow ; ducks, grebes, and loons float on the ponds or dive for 

 food ; sandpipers and plovers trip about the borders of the 

 pools with melancholy pipings ; little rails skulk in and out of 

 the water weeds ; and great white and brown cranes stalk 

 about over the plains like birds on stilts, eating rose-hips or 

 dancing uncouth dances to woo their mates. 



Here the birds live and breed, building nests upon the open 

 prairies of such materials as they can find. A photograph of 

 a Foster's tern's nest from South Dakota shows that it is built 

 principally of sticks, some of 'them large and long, a much 

 more substantial nest than the scooped-out hollow in the sand 

 or the trivial fencing of twigs that I have found among the 

 Eastern terns. 



Their food, too, varies much from their diet in the East ; less 

 fish because fish is not always easy to find even in fresh-water 

 ponds, and more insects of different sorts. In Minnesota, the 

 beautiful Franklin's " gull follows the plough, and picks up 



