The Wandering Tattler 
travel all alone. “What say, dear, shall it be the Shumagins this summer? 
or a little cabin on the Tschuktschi?” There is a proposal a la mode 
for you, and the heart grows faint with desire to follow. 
The Wandering Tattler is known to summer in Alaska, and is sup¬ 
posed to breed in the vicinity of interior lakes and streams, but its nest 
has not yet been taken. 
Returning south to winter along our coasts, the bird reaches us 
sometimes by the 20th of July; while the spring migrations are more or 
less obscured by the fact that non-breeding birds linger irregularly 
throughout the summer. Wherever it ranges, the Wandering Tattler 
haunts the barnacle-covered rocks and tide-swept reefs of the wilder 
shores, and itself appears but a detached fragment of this somber sub¬ 
stance. When frightened, the bird flushes with a quavering cry, some¬ 
what like the tew tew tew of the Greater Yellowlegs (Neoglottis melano- 
leuca), but more subdued; and when it alights, it sits for some time 
motionless in a plover-like attitude, with its long bill held horizontally, 
invisible in the dull light of a foggy day, unless, perchance, outlined 
against the surf. At other times the bird will betray its uneasiness by a 
rapid jetting motion of the tail. The surf has absolutely no terrors for 
this intrepid bird. I have seen a sudden wave snatch him off his feet 
and bury him in an awful smother of foam; yet when the dazzling white¬ 
ness dissolved enough for vision, the bird was disclosed, looking dry and 
saucy, on a rock a dozen feet away. How he managed it I do not know, 
for that comber would have smashed a dory to splinters. 
Those who have been fortunate enough to visit the Farallon Islands 
in May count the Wandering Tattler one of the most prized members of 
their avian pageant, and the one best fitted to symbolize the wild isolation 
of the group. Here their daylight hours are spent religiously upon the 
eternal bug-hunt, but as night approaches the birds come well ashore and 
crouch like devotees behind such boulders as will shield them from the 
merciless wind. 
For the most part the Wandering Tattler, like Kipling’s cat, prefers to 
walk by himself. Kindred tasks, however, sometimes throw him into the 
very tolerable company of Black Turnstones; and Spotted Sandpipers are 
sometimes treated like younger brothers who need a little looking after. 
On Santa Cruz Island the winter shore-line appears to be portioned out 
roughly among such curiously assorted pairs, and one expects to see a 
Piper and a Tattler, rather than a pair of either, on a given headland. 
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