The Wandering Tattler 



travel all alone. "What say, dear, shall it'be the Shumagins this summer? 

 or a little cabin on the Tschuktschi?" There is a proposal a la mode 

 for you, and the heart grows faint with desire to follow. 



The Wandering Tattler is known to summer in Alaska, and is sup- 

 posed to breed in the vicinity of interior lakes and streams, but its nest 

 has not yet been taken. 



Returning south to winter along our coasts, the bird reaches us 

 sometimes by the 20th of July; while the spring migrations are more or 

 less obscured by the fact that non-breeding birds linger irregularly 

 throughout the summer. Wherever it ranges, the Wandering Tattler 

 haunts the barnacle-covered rocks and tide-swept reefs of the wilder 

 shores, and itself appears but a detached fragment of this somber sub- 

 stance. When frightened, the bird flushes with a quavering cry, some- 

 what like the tew tew tew of the Greater Yellowlegs (Neoglottis melano- 

 leuca), but more subdued; and when it alights, it sits for some time 

 motionless in a plover-like attitude, with its long bill held horizontally, 

 invisible in the dull light of a foggy day, unless, perchance, outlined 

 against the surf. At other times the bird will betray its uneasiness by a 

 rapid jetting motion of the tail. The surf has absolutely no terrors for 

 this intrepid bird. I have seen a sudden wave snatch him off his feet 

 and bury him in an awful smother of foam ; yet when the dazzling white- 

 ness dissolved enough for vision, the bird was disclosed, looking dry and 

 saucy, on a rock a dozen feet away. How he managed it I do not know, 

 for that comber would have smashed a dory to splinters. 



Those who have been fortunate enough to visit the Farallon Islands 

 in May count the Wandering Tattler one of the most prized members of 

 their avian pageant, and the one best fitted to symbolize the wild isolation 

 of the group. Here their daylight hours are spent religiously upon the 

 eternal bug-hunt, but as night approaches the birds come well ashore and 

 crouch like devotees behind such boulders as will shield them from the 

 merciless wind. 



For the most part the Wandering Tattler, like Kipling's cat, prefers to 

 walk by himself. Kindred tasks, however, sometimes throw him into the 

 very tolerable company of Black Turnstones; and Spotted Sandpipers are 

 sometimes treated like younger brothers who need a little looking after. 

 On Santa Cruz Island the winter shore-line appears to be portioned out 

 roughly among such curiously assorted pairs, and one expects to see a 

 Piper and a Tattler, rather than a pair of either, on a given headland. 



12/6 



