342 SEA-SIDE HOMES: 
impede their way. They are naturally gentle and confiding 
birds, thinking no evil, and prone to take others to be as 
peaceable and harmless as themselves; but they have only 
too often to learn wisdom by saddest experience of broken 
limbs and maimed bodies, and to oppose treachery by wari- 
ness and caution. In the spring, if not at other times, they 
have a note that is half a whistle, half a chirrup, and sounds 
very different from the clear mellow piping of either of their 
nearest relatives. After a little while spent in recuperating 
their energies after their long flight, in putting on their 
perfect dress, in sham fights and ardent pursuits along the 
strand, more pressing duties call them from the water’s edge 
to the recesses of the sand-hills. There we shall find them 
"at home,” no longer in flocks but in pairs, and keeping 
house with the Sea-swallows. - 
The spot is indieated by the fleecy cloud of the Terns 
flecking the air overhead. We toil on over beds of loose 
dry sand, in which our feet sink and slip backward, and gain 
the recess among the mounds. The ground is here more 
firm and even; the wind has swept it clean of superfluous 
sand, and piled up the sweepings here and there in odd 
nooks; the rains have packed it tight and washed every 
shell and pebble clean. The most careful housekeeper in the 
world could make her home no more tidy than the wind and 
rain have made this shelly dwelling-place of the Terns and 
Plovers. As we walk on, we see that other visitors have 
been before us, each one leaving its "card" engraven on the 
fine sand. Here goes a curious track straight up and over à 
sand hillock, as if half a dozen little animals had ran a race 
one after the other, on stilts, the points of which pricked 
into the sand and formed a band of indentations four or five 
inches broad. These are the footprints of only one creature; 
however,—the sand-crab, a curious little fellow, with a 
‘square body, and eyes upon the ends of two poles that stick 
. Straight out when wanted for use, and shut into the shell 
. like the blades of a pocket-knife, when their owner goes to 



