May, 1916 
A POPULOUS SHORE 
101 
black head from the bird’s body, while the black line down the back of the 
neck may also serve a double purpose. 
But, though a few interesting birds were to be seen on the canals of the 
town, the throngs of Gulls and waders gathered at low tide on the ocean beach, 
flying over from the lagoons in the marshes where they apparently stayed 
during high tide. An interesting spectacle they presented as you looked down 
the shore line — myriad large and small forms including Godwits, Willets, 
Surf-birds, Gulls, and Sandpipers, running out after the waves and hurrying 
back before them, back and forth, back and forth, like children afraid of get- 
ting caught by the waves. Until the hunting season opened the birds were 
remarkably tame, so tame that afternoons at low tide they would walk along 
the shore ahead of me, and if disturbed by a heedless walker would merely 
circle out over the surf, cross the sunpath, and curve in to light a little farther 
down the beach. 
In these assemblages the Gulls were the largest birds, and next to them 
came the brown Marbled Godwits standing on long legs with long bills down 
before them, most interesting birds in appearance and habits. One afternoon 
there must have been from a hundred and fifty to two hundred of them feed- 
ing along a mile of shore line. With them were a few gray Willets, looking 
much smaller as well as shorter billed, perhaps half a dozen in all, a few Surf- 
birds, and possibly two dozen Gulls, including the Ring-billed, Bonaparte, 
and the Western. Some of the Godwits were evidently young of the year, 
being smaller and lighter colored, and having shorter bills than the adults. 
It was amusing to watch the birds feed. As a wave rolled up, combed 
over and broke, the white foam would chase them in, and as they ran before 
it, if it came on too fast, they would pick themselves up, open their wings till 
the cinnamon showed, and scoot in like excited children. But the instant the 
water began to recede they would right about face and trot back with it, 
splashing it up so that you could see it glisten. As they went their long bills — 
in the low afternoon sun strikingly coral red except for the black tip — were 
shoved ahead of them, feeling along through the wet sand, the light glinting 
from them ; and if anything good was discovered deeper, the hunters would 
stop to really probe, sometimes plunging the bill in up to the hilt, on rare occa- 
sions when the tidbit proved out of reach, actually crowding their heads down 
into the sand. 
Tracks and probings were to be seen on the beach where the Godwits had 
been. One of the long-legged birds would sometimes stop its work and lift 
up a foot to scratch its ear, and one that I saw feeding on the edge of a wave 
suddenly dropped and went through the motions of sousing itself, looking 
with its long legs and bill as comical as a human bather jumping up and down 
in the surf. While the Godwits were hunting absorbedly, sometimes the white 
foam of the next wave would flow in over their feet and encircle them, and at 
other times they would wait until the spray of a breaker was almost on them 
and have to scurry for it with open wings. When the tide was so low that the 
waves broke far out on the gently sloping shore, the birds hunted in a more 
leisurely manner. 
They often brought up round balls, presumably small crabs or crustaceans, 
so big they had to gulp them down, and when tempting morsels were seen 
in their bills neighborly Gulls often gave chase. A hard pressed Godwit once 
