A Bird's- Eye View 



These vast colonies are described as flying 

 about their island homes "in great files and 

 platoons, at regular hours in the morning and 

 evening, making a dark girdle of birds more 

 than a quarter of a mile broad, and thirty miles 

 long, whirling round and round the island, and 

 forcing upon the most casual observer a last- 

 ing impression." 



Simultaneously with the arrival of thrush, 

 finch, and warbler in swamp and upland, occurs 

 the equally interesting passage of the host of 

 water birds along the coast of New Jersey, 

 north and south shores of Long Island, the 

 water-front of New England, with the numer- 

 ous adjoining islands. Sometimes at the ocean's 

 edge, but oftener in the protected inlets, where 

 water is quieter, and food more abundant, one 

 may find, in spring and fall, representatives of 

 all the groups hereafter described, an assort- 

 ment far more diversified in their distinctive 

 types than can be found among land birds. 

 As a rapid review of this regular recurring 

 panorama, and as an aid in remembering the 

 more conspicuous differences of the various 

 groups of water fowl, I purpose to give a bird's- 

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