FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



risk of error, even when too far away for the 

 staring white wing-patches of the willets to be 

 longer discernible. 



As a flock there was no getting near them ; I 

 proved the fact to my dissatisfaction more than 

 once ; but sitting quietly on the same bay shore 

 I have repeatedly known a single godwit or willet 

 to feed carelessly past me within the distance of 

 a rod or two. 



So much easier is it to come to close quarters 

 with a solitary bird than with a numerous body. 

 Some member of any sizable flock is sure to be 

 of a timid, panic-stricken turn of mind (like the 

 fool who is always ready to cry " Fire ! " in a 

 crowded theatre), and, taking alarm, is prompt to 

 communicate the same to its fellows. A distin- 

 guished ornithologist (Mr. John H. Bowles) has 

 told me, for example, of knocking over a solitary 

 goose with a stone, though in all probability he 

 could not have stolen within gunshot of a flock 

 of birds of the same kind. It is the habit of geese, 

 he assures me, when happened upon singly, to 

 act in this idiotic, incomprehensible manner, as 

 if their intelligence, and even their inherited 

 common sense, sometimes called instinct, were 

 purely a collective affair. 



I myself, on the Santa Barbara beach, have 

 more than once found a single goose not quite 

 46 



