The Henpecked Shorebird That Goes to Sea 143 



Nothing could have been better for my bird-watching pur- 

 pose than this hot and quiet day, which made a vast mirror 

 of the water and softened the views of the marsh with its 

 haze so that it looked like a photograph which had been 

 made with a diffusion lens. The bird showed no desire to 

 leave and proceeded slowly through the open spaces which 

 had not yet been clogged by the encroaching marsh plants. 

 I could see no boats on the bay. Ordinarily half a dozen or 

 more canoeists, noticing my binoculars and camera, would 

 have paused to investigate and in all probability would have 

 flushed my bird. I wondered where people were until I 

 remembered that the paper of the night before had predicted 

 a "perfect picnic day," which meant that they had taken 

 longer trips and were at the beaches or the mountains— per- 

 haps at Rainier which was plainly visible from base to 

 summit. 



I continued to watch the bird while it whirled occasionally, 

 pecked, abruptly changed direction, and frequently went 

 back over the same spot it had just left. It was a jittery ap- 

 pearing creature, although without the nervous habits of the 

 killdeer which involved much running up and down, con- 

 tinual calling, and sudden flights. The phalarope lacked the 

 teetering uneasiness of the spotted sandpiper which would 

 not feed more than a minute in the same place, but it did 

 have the aimless progress and apparent lack of direction of 

 that bird. Judged by human standards it did not rate high, 

 but as I learned more about the bird I found that it admir- 

 ably performed the exceptional duties which made up an 

 existence quite different from that of any bird I had met. 



I did not know then just how different it was. I was be- 

 ginning to realize that an observer of wildlife must assemble 

 his information differently than a newspaper man. Had I 

 been a city reporter interviewing a new arrival, I could have 

 supplemented my observations by questions to bring out facts 

 which would have told me the salient points of the man's 



