Song Birds and Water Fowl 



clumsy a complication of affairs as one ever 

 finds in nature. 



In the salt marshes, sea-side sparrows were 

 singing — my first view and hearing of them. 

 Their strain is almost the lowest in the scale of 

 song, and yet it is distinctly a song, and not a 

 reiterated call note. One of them perched on a 

 low bush within a few feet of me, and indulged 

 for several minutes in his soft soliloquy, the 

 first part of the chant resembling the conk-a-r'ee 

 of a minute red- winged blackbird, and tipped 

 off with the snarl of a microscopic catbird. 

 There was certainly a genuine impulse of song 

 in his heart; and he seemed as happy in his 

 puny efforts as the most gifted of his race. All 

 about on the marshes the wild, vague note of 

 the sandpipers could be heard, whose discov- 

 ery, when they keep still in the grass, rivals the 

 needle-in-the-haymow problem. Having their 

 nests in this seclusion, they now and then pass 

 over in small parties to the ocean's edge to feed, 

 lodging in the marsh, and dining on the beach. 



One of my excursions in search of water fowl 

 was nothing but a " comedy of errors," from 

 beginning to end. Early in June I took the 



182 



