LAND BIRDS OF THE DUNES 



sometimes called titlark, a slender bird 

 dressed in delicate shades of buff and gray. 

 While with us it utters nothing but its call 

 notes— seet-see-whit— hut in its summer home 

 in Labrador it revels in a flight song. This is 

 a simple refrain, a vibratory che-ivliee, which 

 is rapidly repeated both as the bird flies up 

 into the heights and as he descends to earth. 



At Ipswich pipits appear in flocks in the 

 fall, and walk about the sand dunes with dove- 

 like motions of the head and neck. They fre- 

 quently wag their tails up and down, a nerv- 

 ous trick which makes their recognition in the 

 field an easy one. It is rare that they alight 

 anywhere but on the ground, yet I have occa- 

 sionally seen them on old stumps and fence 

 rails, and a very few times in the branches 

 of trees. 



Swallows are at some seasons so abundant 

 in the dunes that they deser\^e a separate 

 chapter and will be considered later. 



The most characteristic birds of the sand 

 dunes, however, are the migrants from the 

 north that spend the whole or a greater part 

 of the winter. The myrtle warbler is one of 

 these and is considered in some detail in the 

 twelfth chapter. It is the only warbler that 



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