The American Avocet 



all told, occupy the reedy depths of the larger ponds or deploy over the 

 grassy levels. Rails creak and titter, Red-wings clink, Yellow-headed 

 Blackbirds gurgle, wrangle, and screech ; while the Marsh Wrens, familiar 

 spirits of the maze, sputter and chuckle over their quaint basketry. The 

 Tricolored Blackbirds, also, in great silent companies recruited from a hun- 

 dred acres, charge into their nesting covert with a din of uncanny pre- 

 occupation. Over the open ponds Black Terns hover, and Forster Terns 

 flit with languid ease. The Killdeer is not forgotten, nor the Burrowing 

 Owl, whose home is in the higher knolls; but over all and above all and 

 through all comes the clamor of the Black-necked Stilt and the American 

 Avocet. The Avocet is outnumbered, three to one, by his lesser kinsmen, 

 but I have seen a dozen pairs in a single field and three score in a day's 

 roaming; and I have seen isolated pairs a mile from their fellows. 



The Avocets are not rigidly gregarious; they associate freely, how- 

 ever, upon the nesting ground, and are to be seen in small scattered groups 

 as often as singly. Since the tones of the surroundings are chiefly wrought 

 out in gray-greens, grass-greens, and pale blues, the birds have no recourse 

 to the arts of protective coloration, but appear boldly in a garb of black 

 and white, softened on head and neck by cinnamon-brown, and this habit 

 serves to keep them ever before the eye, the observed of all observers. 



Taken in Washington 



HOISTING THE SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 



Pholo by the Author 



1195 



