The Snowy Plover 



on foot, and the male comforts his mate by many solicitous trippings to 

 and fro. These telltale footprints sometimes aid the curious investigator; 

 and it is not inconceivable that the birds themselves require some guidance 

 in these wastes of shifting sands, for they sometimes select a site which is 

 marked by some feature of minor prominence, — a stranded snail-shell, 

 a whitened bit of driftwood, or even, as in the case of one in the M. C. O. 

 collections, an encircling piece of dried kelp. The nesting hollow, more- 

 over, is often carefully lined with broken bits of shell, a mosaic in white 

 which serves to throw the eggs into relief. The eggs, unrelieved, are 



Taken near Santa Barbara 



A CARELESS NEST 



Photo by the Author 



protectively colored to the point of invisibility; and those very traceries 

 and hieroglyphics of black which might serve to distinguish them from 

 sand, make them resemble the weather-stained kelp balls, which out- 

 number them upon the beach a thousand to one. Indeed, the writer 

 has not yet recovered from the self-satisfaction attending the discovery 

 of a waif plover's egg in a drifted bed of these curiously simulant objects. 

 The waif egg came by way of misfortune to the birds, for the Snowy 

 Plovers suffer much at the hands of three blind forces, the wind, the 



