286 Bird - Lore 



Their sagacity is well illustrated by their actions on a summer's afternoon, 

 when bathers preempted the beach, both at its eastern and western ends. 

 Circling about, ready to alight at the tip of the spit, as is their wont, the pres- 

 ence of row-boats and people, supposedly enemies, caused them to turn, re- 

 connoiter, and finally to select a space midway along the beach where, no 

 doubt, continued observation on many other days, when bathers frequented 

 only the ends of the beach, led them to feel free from attack. This same com- 

 pany of Crows, if ever so slightly aware of the approach of a human being 

 when feeding on the inner harbor at low tide, take fright and depart long before 

 their less suspicious companions, the Green and Black-crowned Night Herons, 

 are disturbed. 



Mussels and mud snails no doubt attract the Crows to their favorite feed- 

 ing-ground near the tip of the spit, where the outer beach joins the inner mud- 

 flats, held fast against the inrushing and outgoing tides by thick masses of 

 tough marsh-grass {Spartina glabra). 



Coming up now to the storm-bluff and ^^ desert zone^' of the spit, one finds 

 vegetation and animal forms of life which are quite similar to those some dis- 

 tance inland. Only a few typical shore forms of plants and practically no 

 marine animals are found, although scarcely half a stone's-throw brings one 

 to the outer and inner tidal zones. Plant-lice, ants, various leaf-beetles, spiders, 

 dragon-flies, crickets, and an occasional wasp or butterfly spend their life- 

 cycle on this narrow line of vegetation. The Spotted Sandpiper comes here to 

 nest in the fine sand, pulling a few strands of beach-grass over its simple home 

 as shelter. This summer a large nest of dead beach-grass was discovered, 

 which some larger bird had fashioned and used, a domestic Duck probably, or, 

 possibly a wild bird whose identity may be proven by the fuzzy blackish feathers 

 left in the nest with two barred rusty, white-and-black contour feathers. A 

 delightful mystery this, because the location of the sand spit makes some 

 inviting probabilities doubtful of acceptance without visible proof. Now and 

 then a Kingbird finds its way to the stray clumps of stunted bushes on this tiny 

 "desert," or a small company of Goldfinches race by in search of weed-seed 

 and chicory which creep into byplaces on the western end of the spit. One day 

 a Kingfisher sought a low, precarious perch on the tip of an old log, which 

 successive tides and winds had pushed well up off the beach. Stranger yet, a 

 Spotted Sandpiper, probably the mother bird, actually clung in a perching 

 attitude to the top of a low mullein stalk from which available height she 

 anxiously watched her single newly-fledged nestling, now hiding in the grass 

 and calling piteously at every turn. 



From the inner beach, where Sparrows of various species lurk, flies up now 

 and then a weak- voiced sharp-tailed Finch, to a branch of one of the straggling 

 shrubs on the "desert." Down in the muddy bottoms of the Spartina, where 

 most of their time is spent, live communities of lively fiddler crabs and slow 

 "plant-feeding" snails. Along this inner edge, too, where a half-dry beaehlike 



