198 Tue Birps AgBouT US. 
CHAPTER X. 
THE SHORE BIRDS. 
HILE, in considering the habits of the many 
birds to which we have referred, we have 
been as much about the wet meadows as the dry 
fields, and along the river-shore as in the upland 
woods, nevertheless, the birds that have been brought 
to notice were essentially land birds with the excep- 
tion of the kingfisher, which we can only think of as 
associated with the quiet mill-pond or some little 
creek where the silvery minnows flash in the ripples. 
But there are birds that can only exist by the water, 
or at least depend upon it for their food-supply. 
Every land bird can live on the river-shore or near 
the ocean, but not all “shore birds” can wander from 
the watery wastes, or exchange the dusky avenues of 
a forest for the swamps, the marsh, the treacherous 
quicksands, and the banks of the river. 
The shore birds of the United States are divided 
into six groups or families, some of very few and 
others of many species, making sixty-five in all. The 
greater number of these are birds of the sea-shore, 
some seldom leaving it, and others only at certain 
seasons, when they follow up the main watercourses 
for long distances, and, leaving them, pass to the 
shores of our most insignificant creeks. But these 
