25 



THE OOLOGIST 



Red-backed Sandpipers and fiteen 

 winter Yellow-legs. We also saw about 

 a hundred Black Ducks and many 

 Herring Gulls. In a fresli water 

 meadow just back of the marsh we 

 saw one Virginia Rail. Later we tried 

 the upland country, and we saw a 

 couple of Mourning Doves, a Marsh 

 Hawk, two Blue Jays, some Robins 

 and Slate-colored Juncos, two Meadow 

 larks and a flock of seven Bob-whites. 

 We killed a pair of the Bob-whites 

 and I saved their skins for my collec- 

 tion, but they were in very poor 

 plumage, and we concluded it was too 

 early in the season to make it worth 

 while to spend much time looking for 

 them, although they are rather abun- 

 dant there. We crossed the Cape, 

 which is only a few miles wide at 

 this point, and went on the beach on 

 the outer side facing the Atlantic 

 Ocean. Here we found a narrow 

 beach from which high sand bluffs 

 rose almost perpendicularly on the 

 cide next the woods. The beach at the 

 water's edge sloped at a rather sharp 

 angle and the water looked very deep 

 a few feet off shore. At frequent in- 

 tervals we found the timbers of 

 wreked vessels partly buried in the 

 ever shifting sand. Tracks in the 

 sand showed that four deer had pre- 

 ceded us along the beach but a short 

 time before. We saw four Gannett 

 flying over the waves quite a distance 

 off shore. No birds of any kind ex- 

 cept a few sparrows were visible on 

 the beach, although we followed along 

 the water's edge for a feAv miles until 

 we saw the towers of the wireless 

 station at Wellfleet directly ahead of 

 us, and after giving one last look at 

 the broad Atlantic, we turned west- 

 ward and recrossed the Cape. 



As we reached camp the pedometer 

 swinging on my belt had registered 

 twenty-one miles for the day, and we 

 both felt as though we had had all 



the exercise we needed. But just be- 

 fore dark we all went out on the salt 

 marsh, and Harry Green found a flock 

 of Black-breasted Plover, from which 

 he collected a bird in very good fall 

 plumage, and just at dusk Jones got 

 a Black Duck as the flocks began to 

 come in on the marshes to feed. Dur- 

 ing that evening and the succeeding 

 ones spent in camp we were visited 

 by some of the fishermen of the place, 

 a hardy, rugged class of men, who 

 proved to be good-natured and highly 

 entertaining with their quaint humor 

 and stories of the sea coast. 



The next day we spent mostly on 

 the beach, where we saw many Black 

 Ducks, while Winter Yellow-legs had 

 evidently arrived during the night, as 

 we saw fully double the number 

 which we had found the first day. We 

 saw about forty Black-breasted Plover 

 scattered along feeding on the sand, 

 and one Ring-necked Plover and one 

 Pectoral Sandpiper on the marsh. 

 Dinsmore Green had wooden duck de- 

 coys in a salt pond right in front of 

 the camp and shore bird decoys in a 

 shallow puddle of water nearby. 

 Black-breasted Plover and winter Yel- 

 low-legs were feeding on the marsh 

 in plain sight from the camp windows 

 a good deal of the time, and they fre- 

 quently dropped in among the decoys, 

 where we killed what birds we needed 

 to cook in camp. I saw one Winter 

 Yellow-legs which actually tried to 

 alight on the back of one of the float- 

 ing duck decoys, but finally decided 

 to take a more firm footing on the 

 shore of the salt pond. 



The two following days were much 

 like the ones already described. We 

 found about fifty Black-crowned Night 

 Herons, most of them in good adult 

 plumage, living in a very small swamp 

 back some distance from the coast. On 

 a small wooded island on the marsh 

 in front of the camp Jones showed 



