WATER-BIRD WAIFS 



well back from any water at all. I have found nests 

 in such places as fields of potatoes or corn. 



There is another species closely related to the last 

 which should not be confused with it — the Solitary 

 Sandpiper. In May, or in August or September, we 

 are liable now and then to meet one feeding along the 

 muddy or spongy edge of some little pond hole, or in 

 almost any sort of a wet place. Sometimes there will 

 be a pair of them, but more often the bird is alone, 

 solitary in reality, as in name. It nests in the far north, 

 and until very recently its breeding habits were un- 

 known, till its eggs began to be discovered, in the 

 Canadian Northwest, in abandoned Robins' nests up 

 in trees. It is not known to breed in the United States. 

 One can tell it from the Spotted Sandpiper by its 

 much darker back, and from the Yellow-legs by its 

 greenish legs. It is a beautiful, gentle bird, and I love 

 to sit and watch one feed in a bog, so graceful, so neat 

 in person, with the bearing of real refinement — sand- 

 piper good breeding. 



Next comes the order of marsh-dwellers, the Paludi- 

 colae of science. Of these our principal group is the 

 rails. These are birds which the average person 

 never sees and has never heard of. But if one find 

 the right place, some very oozy bog, overgrown with 

 "cat-tails," and will throw a stone into it, so as to make 

 a loud splash, like as not there will instantly arise a 

 series of loud, wailing, craking cries. These are the 

 rails, not fence rails, but real live ones, called thus, 



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