'PEEPS" AND "OX-EYES' 



135 



As the green-topped surf dashes to pieces on the pebbles 

 and goes sliding in a silvery sheet up the yellow sand, you will 

 notice just above its frothy edge a flock of httle gray sprites, 

 their tiny legs twinkling as they patter swiftly over the smooth 

 floor. Sometimes the sliding sheet of water overtakes them. 

 If it is nearly spent, they mind it not; but if the rush is too 

 strong, up springs the 

 flock, all members at the 

 same instant, and with 

 quick flashes of light- 

 gray wings, it skims the 

 surf -sheets or the sand, to 

 a point farther on. The 

 unison of action in the 

 rising, flight and landing 

 of the flock is as perfect 

 as if each little pair of 

 wings were worked by the same wires. How does each bird 

 know the impulses of all the others? Watch them, and see 

 if you can guess the secret. 



At the seashore I never weary of watching these busy 

 little creatures, and never fail to be amused by the twinkling 

 of their tiny legs as they run before the water. As the sheet 

 of surf recedes, down they run after it, to pick up whatever 

 of insect or other edible animal life it has brought to them from 

 the sea, or uncovered on the sand. 



Small as the Sandpipers are, their slaughter by gunners 

 was in full career when it was stopped by the federal migra- 

 tory bird law, on October 1, 1913. Had it continued a little 



LEAST SANDPIPER. 



