250 Birds Every Child Should Know 
Above our heads the sullen clouds 
Scud black and swift across the sky; 
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds 
Stand out the white light-houses high. 
Almost as far as eye can reach 
I see the close-reefed vessels fly. 
As fast we flit along the beach, ^ 
One little sandpiper and I. 
I watch him as he skims along 
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; 
He starts not at my fitful song, 
Or flash of fluttering drapery. 
He has no thought of any wrong; 
He scans me with a fearless eye. 
Stanch friends are we, well-tried and strong, 
The little sandpiper and I. 
Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night 
When the loosed storm breaks furiously? 
My driftwood fire will burn so bright! 
To what warm shelter canst thou fly? 
I do not fear for thee, though wroth 
The tempest rushes through the sky: 
For are we not God’s children both, 
Thou, little sandpiper, and I ? 
Almost every child I know is more familiar 
with Celia Thaxter’s poem about the little sand- 
piper than with the bird itself. But if you have 
the good fortune to be at the seashore in the 
late summer, when flocks of the friendly mites 
come to visit us from the Arctic regions on their 
way south, you can scarcely fail to become 
acquainted with the companion of Mrs. Thax- 
ter’s lonely walks along the beach at the Isles 
of Shoals where her father kept the lighthouse. 
