SOME BUZZARDS BAY BIRDS. 
Winthrop Packard. 
My camp on Squeteague Pond, an inlet of Buzzards Bay, 
is an old-time boathouse with a shoreward door which 
stands open to sun and wind all summer long. The dark-of- 
the-moon tides lap the grass roots by the doorpost, wraiths 
of sea-fog drift in and gossip together at night, and in the 
dusk of dawn I get every note of the bird chorus and watch 
the wonderful colors of daybreak on sea and sky, without 
bothering even to lift my head. It is a great region for 
birds, which, when you camp among them, soon accept you 
as a harmless if eccentric neighbor. 
Once during the summer a Bald Eagle soared in majestic 
spirals over the cove, the sunlight glinting on his white 
head—an inspiring sight. Another large visitor came in 
late August, trailing his long legs behind and dropping them 
in the thatch, where he stood a little time alert, and then 
flapped heavily, rapidly away—a Great Blue Heron. Five 
or six Night Herons, seemingly a family, fed on the flats 
all summer, often in broad day, and by “quawking” to them 
I could make them come over my head, flapping and calling 
excitedly. 
Most friendly of all was the Little Green Heron which 
frequented my tide-margin doorstep. Every low tide bore 
tiny Crustacea, fish-food which the killifish seek in the 
shallows as the water rises. The Green Heron, seeking the 
killifish, comes flapping in like a short-tailed awkward crow. 
He alights erect, fluffs out his glossy head feathers, and 
waits; then he crouches and creeps, his long yellow legs 
poking ludicrously out from under—a most stealthy ap¬ 
proach to the margin. A lightning stroke of the bill, and 
a cobbler has gone from the shallows to the department of 
the interior so rapidly that you can hardly note the passage. 
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