September, 1922 
393 
A WHISP OF CAPE COD PLOVER 
OBSERVATIONS OF A SHOREBIRD GUNNER WHILE ENSCONCED 
IN HIS BLIND ON THE MARSH DURING A DAY IN LATE SUMMER 
T here was a startled, plaintive 
cry and a whir of wings. I 
looked up, as surprised as this 
wild thing I had flushed. I had 
merely strolled along the beach that 
afternoon early in August with no 
thought of shooting. In the air before 
me were a dozen plover. I instinctively 
sighted two with my walking-stick. I 
was sure I could have made a double. 
During the rest of the walk I flushed 
at least fifty more. That night I tele- 
graphed for my shotgun. 
The plover* is likely to be surrounded 
by all his cousins of the large wader 
family to which he belongs. Sand-peeps 
and ring-necks seem to admire him, to 
say nothing of swallows, gulls and 
members of other 
families who circle 
around him in the 
air, in the water, or 
when he feeds in 
marshy ground. But 
no one who has seen 
a plover close at 
hand can ever mis- 
take h i m for an- 
other bird, at least 
on the ground. (In 
flight he is some- 
times puzzlingly like 
the ring-neck.) 
That tall slender 
body in mottled 
gray coat w'ith 
white waistcoat ; 
that alert poise of 
head ; the quaint 
minuet - like walk — 
he seems a perfectly 
groomed young gen- 
tleman, well -bred 
and debonair. He 
rises to flight swift- 
ly, though without 
the sudden spring of 
the snipe or the 
warning “b-r-r-r” of 
the quail and larger birds. He flies 
straight — alas ! to his own undoing ! — 
until he alights, circles again and again 
like a home-coming airplane. How 
many times I have watched him wheel, 
pivot, climb, dive, then fade far off, an 
infinitesimal dot in the blue, only to 
return and settle once more within a 
stone’s throw. 
The plover lives quietly on shore or 
in damp meadow, or marsh. At dawn 
and at sunset he comes to little shallow 
lagoons in the salt marshes to feed. As 
light breaks you see him, usually in a 
flock of a dozen, his narrow wings 
limned against the sky. The flock 
sweeps past you like a cloud of arrows, 
• The Yellowlegs, Totnnus meinnoleucus (Win- 
ter Yellowleg) and Totnnus flnvipes (Summer 
Yellowleg) stand as “Plover” in the Cape Cod 
vernacular. — [Editors.] 
By STANLEY T. WILLIAMS 
dips, turns sharply, and with a little 
flutter sinks down almost always quite 
near you. If you do not move he, too, 
stays at rest, glancing at you with timid 
eyes,, and uttering his sad, plaintive 
note. 
A Cape Cod marsh at best is dreary 
to the casual eye. Vast stretches of 
sedge, thickets of high grass, islets of 
sand, vile viscous mud, skeletons of 
sea-creatures, ditches of stale water — 
all make it ugly to the eye and treach- 
erous underfoot. But as one comes to 
love a moor, so one may come to love a 
marsh. From day to day its coloring 
alters, its soft browns brightening into 
greens. In June wild roses blossom on 
its edge, and it is bordered with dark 
pines. In September a strange scarlet 
weed blossoms, so that parts of the 
marsh seem to blush with a kind of 
shame for the ugliness of the rest, and 
at dawn it has a wild beauty. The sea 
wafts salt breezes over it; the sun, ris- 
ing, stains it a burnished gold. And all 
around rises to the ears the myriad 
sounds of teeming life. Around you 
take place the vast and minute, the 
infinite and the tiny processes of the 
creation of God. There is hum of 
insects seizing their brief bliss of an 
hour, the calls of strange sea-birds, the 
sounds of the creatures dwelling in the 
waters. It is all beauty, unspoiled and 
elemental. 
A BOUT a week before the opening 
of the plover season the marsh 
takes on a new aspect. Passing by at 
sunset one sees outlined against the 
west figures of irregular shape; they 
resemble grotesques of human beings. 
A closer view reveals these to be plover- 
blinds. They are built on the edges of 
the shallow ponds in the marsh. The 
most strategic sites are taken early, 
those at the head of the whole system 
of little lakes. And by the first day the 
ponds are circled with a whole series of 
these entrenchments. Too close for 
comfort ! I have often ducked, and 
prayed for my eyes, as a charge of shot 
buzzed overhead. To be sure, eights 
and nines are the fashion in plover 
shooting, but even a spray of these I 
don’t care for. 
The best blinds are circular in form, 
about four feet in 
height and four feet 
in diameter. They 
are made of a tan- 
gled weave of pine- 
boughs fastened to 
anything that may 
serve as stakes. 
The top of the 
ambush is often 
crowned with 
leaves. Inside is a 
chair or two, or a 
rudely - contrived 
bench. But this 
blind which I have 
just described is a 
supreme effort of 
the blind - builder’s 
art. Compared to 
the others the occu- 
pant is a Sybarite; 
he is luxurious. The 
ordinary blind is a 
heap of boughs, and, 
for a seat, a damp 
plank. My own 
coin d'avantage was 
a set of bed-slats 
and an expanse 
of g'u nny sacks. 
Around it and in it the mud was a foot 
deep, exhaling a stench as noisome, I 
would wager, as the poisonous bogs of 
India. Day by day, as the season ad- 
vances and the blinds are used, the litter 
around them increases — empty cases, 
feathers from the slain, matches, cigar- 
ette stubs ; the debris of this rather one- 
sided battle. 
In these absurd crannies I have passed 
blissful, expectant hours. Here in dark- 
ness I havf waited. I have seen the 
false dawn pass into deeper darkness, 
then lighten swiftly till the huge ball of 
fire peered watchfully over the rim of 
the horizon, and lighted the marsh with 
a fiery glow. Here on the same day I 
have sat till the sun sank reluctantly 
on the other side of the marsh, leaving it 
{Continued on page 422) 
A shorebird blind on a Cape Cod marsh 
