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run across four nests, all amid the close-cropped grass, in the same pasture. 

 There would be just the fan-like spreading of a gray-and-white tail as the 

 sitting Longspur trailed herself away from her eggs ; her mate, the while, 

 floating, butterfly-like, in air, — that crisp, clear, — " Ruderit," gushing from 

 his throat. (In this pasture were just a few pairs of the Lark Bunting: first 

 " homesteaders" in a region wherein dear, dead John C. Knox and I failed 

 to find them, five years ago.) As I passed on, along the fence-less highways,, 

 an occasional McCown Longspur, soaring much higher in air than his smaller 

 fellow, would blithely pipe out his barn-swallow-warble-like, — " Trillisth." 



A mile or two out of town a stranger wended its meandering way into 

 view: a Bank Swallow. A mile further on, a deep cut-bank showed evident 

 signs of Swallow occupancy- In how brief a time does a wild country »ive 

 place for both human and for brute types of civilization : For forty miles 

 before reaching the end of the railway portion of my journey I had found 

 the entire country literally asoak. Milts and miles of inch-high wheat was 

 lifting liliputian green flags of promise above interminable pools of Mater. 

 But here the land was far more broken ; with a much lighter soil. One 

 could pick his way over fairly dry ground. But I reached the margin of a 

 deep drainage-way ; what had once been a series of winding marshes, 

 among the hills. The road I had been following had become just a road- 

 way ; trailing its purely linear course across what was now a meanderino- 

 stream, trickling its way across a pasture meadow. Plainly, it was a case of 

 portage. 



Plates, camera, bedding, two-days' provision : three trips. But, amid- 

 stream of the initial trip there came to one's ear a wholly new sensation: 

 surely what could it possibly be but the " bleating" of the Wilson Snip? 



In intervals of rest, and while re-dressing, the eye sought, wonderingly, 

 for that ventriloquistic tantalus. The ear, meanwhile, was trying to fathom 

 the mystery of the Bleating: was it Throat ; or was it Wings ? (Tail it 

 most assuredly is not : Were it this, the sound would be continuous, like 

 that of the booming Night Hawk ; which, as some of us know, intimately, 

 is made with stiffly set, de-curved wings. But the " bleating " of the Snipe 

 sounds for all the world like the winnowing of the wings of whistling ducks • 

 as they scurry by, in mad hurry wrought by fear.) Before I rose to take up, 

 again, the burden and the way, the " bleater" had been sighted, hi?h in air, 

 I watched him ; for such an experience might never be mine again. 



When, in due time, I broke over the butte-heights and the long, wind- 

 ing meadow met my sight, confusion came over me. For, not a meadow but 

 a lake dawned upon my expectant vision. It was only after a full four 

 miles of walk, adown the coulee, had brought into view familiar farms that 

 I realized how provokingly a treacherous memory and a hidden sun had 

 caused me to go West instead of South. But then ; had I not heard the 

 Bleating of the Snipe ? 



