22 Union Bay 



purposes there would be little advantage if we could distin- 

 guish the individuals. What I mean to say is this: the differ- 

 ent kinds of birds that visit the marsh do so regularly and 

 make stays that are almost as definite as the two-week res- 

 ervation which the Thompsons or Grays make at the resort 

 hotel where they spend their vacations. 



To those who do not realize the definiteness of the sched- 

 ule on which nature operates, and who regard the presence 

 of wildlife in any area as accidental and meaningless, this 

 statement may appear of no particular concern, but it is of 

 such importance in understanding the true position of a 

 marsh community that I have gathered through more than 

 ten years a rather detailed record of the marsh calendar and 

 a register of the list of visitors which may reasonably be ex- 

 pected to drop in for an hour, a day, or an extended stay. 



I have always regarded the marsh year as beginning on 

 March 1. The months of January and February were never a 

 rejuvenation as the start of a new period should be, but 

 rather a tapering off— a time when the wildlife thinned out 

 in numbers and species, a time when the marsh lay brown 

 and dormant and showed no signs of new growth. The bald- 

 pates, American mergansers (mergansers are called fish 

 ducks by hunters), scaups, and bufffeheads among the ducks, 

 and a few scattered species such as cormorants, coots, and 

 pied-billed grebes could be seen now and then on the bay, 

 but their numbers were small and they always seemed to me 

 much like the stragglers around a summer resort' who stayed 

 in late fall only because their apartments in town had not 

 been vacated by their summer tenants. 



That was not my idea of the opening of the year in the 

 marsh. For me, it began logically when I saw the first tree 

 swallows, blue-green backed and white beneath, flying over 

 the bay. The earliest arrival date was February 21, the aver- 

 age March 1, and the latest March 15. They were the first 

 migrants and they brought promise of activity to come and 



