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SHORE 
BIRDS 
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BIRDS SHOWN ON THIS PLATE ARE THE ONLY SPECIES 
THAT MAY BE LEGALLY HUNTED. 
SENTINELS 
OF 
THE SURF 
Shorebird shooting offers a combi¬ 
nation of the delightful elements 
that appeal to both the wild fowler 
and the man who follows the dogs 
By RAYMOND SCHRENKEISEN 
Photos by A. Brooker Klugh 
i 
warmth of a Sep¬ 
tember sunset 
when the sage 
grass takes on a 
hue of burnished 
gold or the mystic 
fascination in the 
dank, languorous 
and brackish night 
air suffused with 
the spectral light 
of a new 'moon, 
all lend a note of 
appeal that is to- 
tally irresistible 
to the admirers of 
nature’s wildest 
moods. Added to 
L OVERS of the outdoors may 
roughly be divided into two 
groups — those who favor the 
beauties of woodland haunts, rolling 
fields and inland waterways, and those 
who prefer the great open places with 
the tang of salt air and the ever restive 
and boundless sea. There is some¬ 
thing, however, about the wild beauty 
and primeval grandeur of a lonely 
stretch of a marsh meadow that seems 
to appeal equally to both classes. Its 
utter desolation in the cold gray light 
of dawn, its elusive charm in the 
this is the attraction of being able to 
study at close hand the multifarious 
forms of wild life generally to be found 
along these stretches of sea beach and 
marsh land. 
By no means among the least inter¬ 
esting of these creatures of our tidal 
waters are the shore birds, and it shall 
be the purpose of this article to de¬ 
scribe briefly the characteristics, life 
histories and methods of hunting the 
four species that may be legally killed 
under the provisions of the Federal 
Migratory Bird Law, viz., the greater 
and lesser yellow-legs, black-breasted 
plover and golden plover, together with 
information concerning the habits of 
shore birds in general. 
The shore birds belong to the great 
order of Limicolae, comprising the di¬ 
verse varieties of phalaropes, snipe, 
dowitchers, sandpipers, godwits, cur¬ 
lews, willets, plovers, turnstones and 
oyster catchers, of which more than 
seventy-five species occur in North 
America. They are among the most 
widely distributed of all birds, but the 
great majority of them are merely 
visitants in the United States duiing 
the migrations to and from their 
breeding grounds, and at which times, 
true to their name, they may be found 
in the vicinity of all bodies of water, 
large and small, though many of them 
are equally at home on the uplands. 
The migration of our shore birds 
forms one of the most fascinating sub¬ 
jects in the science of ornithology. 
This fact is readily appreciated when 
it is considered that the large number 
of species winter as far south as Ar¬ 
gentina, Patagonia, Peru, Chile, Brazil 
and the Falkland Islands in South 
America and breed during the summer 
in the Arctic Circle. It is said that 
the knot holds the record for the long- 
•3Pjp> v ; v 
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