The Marbled Godwit 





M 



Taken in Santa Barbara 



•THE SANCTIMONIOUS GODWITS" 



Photo by the Author 



bunch — rise above the skyline, and I without time to get into action. 



In the fourth "picture" the camera does the talking and there really 

 is nothing to say. The time was May 4, 1914, and the place Santa Bar- 

 bara, within hail of a policeman. As we bowled along the East Boulevard 

 we sighted two great, innocent Godwits feeding at the water's edge, where 

 the beach is narrowest. They were letting two pedestrians pass at fifty 

 feet, so we whirled about, unlimbered the camera, drove up alongside the 

 curbing and opened fire from the auto. Then I made advances on hands 

 and knees, or bellywise, in studious humility. Half scared, half curious, 

 the birds retreated slowly, but I succeeded in getting within twenty feet 

 of them on two occasions. The Godwits must have thought me a silly 

 fellow, kowtowing to their prairie-bred majesties in such abject fashion. 

 Or perhaps I was the great California Badger, of which they had heard. 

 All right ; we are willing to be all things to all birds, if by any means we may 

 photograph some. Behold your servant the sand turtle, the stranded 

 merman (Bing! — another exposure), the legless wonder, the omphlopoph- 

 agus (Bing! — reverse and change). But the advent of a noisy truck 

 occurring in conjunction with my own perigee — or periornis — puts the 

 quarry to flight, gently murmuring. 



The Marbled Godwits have suffered much from gunfire, and from 

 invasion of their breeding haunts. Formerly nesting as far south as 

 Nebraska and Iowa, they are now known as breeders only in a few spots 



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