The Black-bellied Plover 



attitude of the bird-lover. The sci- 

 entist acquires facts; the sportsman, 

 experience (of a sort) ; the artist, 

 impressions, or visions of beauty; 

 the economist mediates between 

 them all and passes sentence of life 

 or death; but only your bird-lover 

 lives his birds. He it is who enters 

 by an effort of sympathy into all 

 the aspects of nature, and pro- 

 nounces them good. He knows. 



The artist, I submit, ought to 

 have the first chance to pass judg- 

 ment on the value of our plovers. 

 Be the waters of Santa Barbara 

 channel never so blue, as on this 

 September day, the shore golden, 

 and the air vibrating with conscious 

 purity after two thousand leagues of 

 matchless ablution, there yet lacks 

 something in the vision unless a 

 flock of Beetle-heads, splendid, tu- 

 multuous, is hurrying across the sky. 

 The strand, glistening though it 

 be with each fresh silvering of the 

 refluent wave, is a barren mockery 

 unless it may reflect the beauty of 

 some Shore-bird. And what more 

 haughty image may it give back 

 than this plover in his nuptial 

 panoply of black? Or what 

 more modest and demure than 

 the dove-like "grays" of 

 autumn? If it were to paint a 

 portrait in the narrowest sense, the painter could hardly do better than 

 depict that large, gracious eye, that "beetling," capable brow, or that 

 expression, half naive, half stern, and altogether powerful, which greets 

 the fortunate student on an unexploited shore. 



But the sportsman has long claimed this bird for his own. Its 

 numbers mark it for the pot, while its increasing wariness invites genteel 

 destruction. Sapid its meat unquestionably is, tender, and well-con- 

 ditioned in the early fall. Its northern residence has assured the bird 



A SPRING PORTRAIT 



1 29 1 



