Among the Guests Registered 157 



bird which once was present in large numbers in the central 

 part of the United States. It has two habits which practically 

 insure the destruction of any shorebird— the first is its lack 

 of fear of the hunter, and the second, its habit of flying in 

 compact groups. This eight-inch shorebird has never been 

 plentiful in the Pacific Northwest, but now it is so rare that 

 I had never before seen a live one and knew it only through 

 specimens I had studied in the museums. Few birds are 

 as easy to identify. The way in which it stretched its neck 

 reminded me of a pectoral sandpiper, although it was entirely 

 different in other respects. I made the usual notes for use in 

 checking and recorded the short bill, yellowish legs, feathers 

 of back with blackish centers, but the recording was only 

 to follow the established routine for I knew the creature the 

 minute I saw it. No other shorebird visiting our region had 

 the uniformly tan underparts displayed by this species. This 

 tan almost matched the sand upon which the sandpiper 

 walked so that I faced the task of photographing a bird 

 against a background of almost the same color, an extremely 

 difficult job. The result proved valuable for identification 

 but almost worthless as a photograph. 



I learned many things by observation during the time it 

 remained in the marsh. I tried to follow it with the canoe 

 as it fed on the small island, but it always kept far enough 

 ahead of me to make that effort useless. Then I found that 

 the bird followed a route regular enough eventually to bring 

 it to me if I stayed quietly in the grounded canoe. It fed 

 quickly and intensively in one spot before flying a few yards 

 to repeat the process. It was constantly among the gulls on 

 the flat, and when one of them would make a move to peck 

 it the shorebird would jump a foot or two without apparent 

 alarm and resume feeding. It stayed aloof from the killdeers 

 that moved about. 



In the evenings I read many interesting things about the 

 buff-breasted sandpiper. Although I had long since ceased to 



