128 ON THE BIRDS' HIGHWAY 



row music, — that tinkling of tiny bells, 

 — made one dreamy. A vesper sparrow 

 sang from the hut's roof his degraded song- 

 sparrow melody, and then as a flock of 

 summer yellow-legs swung into the mud 

 flats of Long Cove a chorus of sweet 

 clear whistles drifted with the salt ocean 

 air to us. It was an evening of peace. 

 Peering into the darkness before closing 

 the door on the sleeping land and restless 

 waters, a trio of night heron cast their slow- 

 moving shadows on the silvery flats of the 

 starlit cove. 



The sun had scarce risen above the 

 eastern dunes when we resumed our tramp 

 for Gay Head. Our path lay along the 

 shores of Great Tisbury, Black Point, and 

 Chilmark Ponds and over the Nasha- 

 quitsa clifi^s. The same birds 

 of the previous day accom- 

 panied us or appeared from 

 time to time, but on a stretch 

 of broad sand that separates 

 the Atlantic from the Black 

 Point waters we began to discover a num- 

 ber of least tern flying above us with their 

 larger cousins. All the way to the cliffs 

 a dozen or more birds would be in sight 



