224 WAKE-ROBIN 
more common and abundant species are field-birds, 
and entire strangers to deep forests ? 
In Europe some birds have become almost domes- 
ticated, like the house sparrow; and in our own 
country the cliff swallow seems to have entirely 
abandoned ledges and shelving rocks, as a place to 
nest, for the eaves and projections of farm and 
other outbuildings. 
After one has made the acquaintance of most of 
the land-birds, there remain the seashore and its 
treasures. How little one knows of the aquatic 
fowls, even after reading carefully the best authori- 
ties, was recently forced home to my mind by the _ 
following circumstance: I was spending a vacation 
in the interior of New York, when one day a 
stranger alighted before the house, and with a cigar 
box in his hand approached me as I sat in the door- 
way. Iwas about to say that he would waste his 
time in recommending his cigars to me, as I never 
smoked, when he said that, hearing I knew some- 
thing about birds, he had brought me one which 
had been picked up a few hours before in a hay- 
field near the village, and which was a stranger to 
all who had seen it. As he began to undo the box 
I expected to see some of our own rarer birds, per- 
haps the rose-breasted grosbeak or Bohemian chat- 
terer. Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when 
I beheld instead a swallow-shaped bird, quite as 
large as a pigeon, with forked tail, glossy black 
above and snow-white beneath. Its parti-webbed 
feet, and its long graceful wings, at a glance told 
