The American Avocet 
all told, occupy the reedy depths of the larger ponds or deploy over the 
grassy levels. Rails creak and titter, Red-wings clink, Yellow-headed 
Blackbirds gurgle, wrangle, and screech; while the Marsh Wrens, familiar 
spirits of the maze, sputter and chuckle over their quaint basketry. The 
Tricolored Blackbirds, also, in great silent companies recruited from a hun¬ 
dred acres, charge into their nesting covert with a din of uncanny pre¬ 
occupation. Over the open ponds Black Terns hover, and Forster Terns 
Hit with languid ease. The Killdeer is not forgotten, nor the Burrowing 
Owl, whose home is in the higher knolls; but over all and above all and 
through all comes the clamor of the Black-necked Stilt and the American 
Avocet. The Avocet is outnumbered, three to one, by his lesser kinsmen, 
but I have seen a dozen pairs in a single field and three score in a day’s 
roaming; and I have seen isolated pairs a mile from their fellows. 
The Avocets are not rigidly gregarious; they associate freely, how¬ 
ever, upon the nesting ground, and are to be seen in small scattered groups 
as often as singly. Since the tones of the surroundings are chiefly wrought 
out in gray-greens, grass-greens, and pale blues, the birds have no recourse 
to the arts of protective coloration, but appear boldly in a garb of black 
and white, softened on head and neck by cinnamon-brown, and this habit 
serves to keep them ever before the eye, the observed of all observers. 
Taken in Washington Photo by the Author 
HOISTING THE SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 
1195 
