FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



the beach as fast as their legs will bear them. 

 If they get their toes wet, it is no killing mat- 

 ter ; but they keep a sharp lookout against any- 

 thing worse than that. The most timorous of 

 screaming human surf-bathers could not be more 

 insistent upon that score. 



If you do not enjoy this animated scene, then 

 it is hard to think what you are made of. All 

 their movements are so quick, so eager, and so 

 graceful ! And the birds themselves are so 

 pretty, snowy white, with black, or black and 

 brown, markings. 



But they are even more engaging if you catch 

 them at their bath. This they sometimes take in 

 the uppermost reaches of the surf, a hurried 

 and none too comfortable operation, as it looks, 

 since they must retreat every time another wave 

 comes in. They much prefer, I think, the edges 

 of some still tide-pool, where they can dip and 

 splash at their leisure. 



About the bathing itself, as far as I have ob- 

 served, there is nothing peculiar ; but after it I 

 once saw them practising what was to me a trick 

 as novel as it was pleasing. Standing on the 

 sand, they sprang straight into the air again and 

 again to a height of six or eight inches, shaking 

 themselves vigorously while so doing, evidently 

 for the purpose of drying their feathers. At the 



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