hundred yards. They would get up just above 

 the grass, and flutter and drop— a puttering, 

 short-winded, apoplectic struggle, very unbe- 

 coming and unworthy. 



By noon I had completed a circle and re- 

 crossed the lighthouse road in the direction of 

 the bay. A thin sheet of lukewarm water lay 

 over all this section. The high spring tides had 

 been reinforced by unusually heavy rains during 

 April and May, giving a great area of pasture 

 and hay land back, for that season, to the sea. 

 Descending a copsy dune from the road, I sur- 

 prised a brood of young killdeers feeding along 

 the drift at the edge of the wet meadow. They 

 ran away screaming, leaving behind a pair of 

 spotted sandpipers, "till-tops," that had been 

 wading with them in the shallow water. The 

 sandpipers teetered on for a few steps, then rose 

 at my approach, scaled nervously out over the 

 drowned grass, and, circling, alighted near where 

 they had taken wing, continuing instantly with 

 their hunt, and calling Tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet, 

 and teetering, always teetering, as they tiptoed 

 along. 



If perpetual motion is still a dream of the 



[59] 



