The Sanderling 
Taken in Santa Barbara Photo by the Author 
OVERDUE 
distinguish so many of his kinsfolk that we hail him chief, but because in 
structure and habit he is most exactly adapted to those special circum¬ 
stances which constitute a shore. Pray consider what a very special sort 
of place a shore is. It is the meeting place of the two biggest things on 
earth; viz., land and sea. Taken broadly, it has all the variety of the one 
and the mystery of the other. It is the point of contact between two 
incommensurables, two practical infinities. It is the place of revelation, 
too; for the sea not only displays thereon examples of her own briny 
treasures, but she takes a tithe of all that the land has to give her and 
filings it back in scornful tribute on the shore. In width a shore may vary 
from a mathematical postulate, as where a glacier fronts the ocean with 
its wall of ice, to a teeming lagoon whose inner confines are leagues re¬ 
moved from the roar of the surf. In length it is all but measureless, 
stretching its single-stranded mazes a dozen times around the globe. In 
fortune, too, it varies from the placid sands of Coronado to the fearful 
crags of Magellan, or the cliffs of Norway, mocking with their granite 
Neptune’s mightiest rebuff. Of such stress and variety and opportunity 
were the Shore-birds born,—the Shore-birds, who alone of living creatures 
have laid eyes on every coast. 
But of Shore-birds, hundreds-rich in species, there is an inner circle 
of privilege, just as there is an inner belt of what we call the shore. The 
changes of the tide, with their recurrent wettings of the sand, mark out 
this inner belt of privilege. To a place at this magic table all Shore-birds 
may, indeed, aspire on occasion,—Turnstones, Godwits, Plovers, all these 
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