INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS. 



guarded reefs, where the Gulls flock and the Petrels dash 

 in the wake of cautious ships, its arms reaching landward 

 until the bay, where the Wild Ducks float, laps the shore, 

 where the Sandpipers patter ; and creeping on through the 

 land as a sluggish creek, traverses the marshes where the 

 Rail clamours about his half-floating nest, and finally ming- 

 ling with fresh downward currents loses its way among gaunt 

 trees, where the Herons and Bitterns build, and is absorbed 

 by some low, wood-girt meadow, where the last earth-filtered 

 drops make mud, from which the Snipe and Woodcock 

 probe their insect food, and give a deeper green to the 

 coarse grasses where the Plover pipes. 



The Water-birds have another claim also upon your at- 

 tention ; you may study them in autumn and winter, and they 

 fill many gaps in the bird year by their presence at seasons 

 when the Land-birds are few. The majority of Water- 

 birds come to us as migrants, or as winter visitors : the 

 Herons, Bitterns, several of the Eails, a few Plovers, and 

 Sandpipers breed in our marshes, and the beautiful Wood 

 Duck nests in the river copse. When these birds breed, 

 however, the high tides and spring-flooded meadows render 

 it very difficult to approach the nests, or to gain a satisfac- 

 tory knowledge of the birds themselves, and the same diffi- 

 culty obtains in watching the migrants on their upward 

 course. But in autumn the conditions are changed, espe- 

 cially in seasons of summer drought, and as the Land-birds 

 withdraw, one by one, you will have the leisure to go shore- 

 ward. 



The Plovers, Eails, and Sandpipers begin to gather in 

 early August, and from that time until the rivers and 

 creeks are ice coated, the Water-fowls will be passing every 

 day, and from twilight until dawn. Various Ducks will go 

 over the garden itself, and next day you will find them feed- 

 ing in the sluggish marsh pools, where you gathered the cat- 

 tail-flags and rose-mallows, or else floating on the mill-pond 

 in the place of the summer lilies. 



The Gulls return to the bar and shore islands, from their 

 breeding-haunts at the eastern end of the Sound. The old 



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