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On the Rim: of the West 
By DoroTHY HELMER 
I VISITED in southern California the winter of 1948-49. My parents have 
a seaside cottage in the town of Leucadia, about 25 miles up the coast from 
San Diego. We live on the very rim of the western world, the high, red 
cliffs of the Pacific. 
Mother and Father, who are not bird watchers, named our small cot- 
tage Far Horizons. But when I am there we call it after the little sea-go- 
ing bird, the Least Petrel. 
If one is going to be in San Diego county for any length of time and 
has some interest in the natural history of the region, it is a good idea to 
make an early contact with the Museum of Natural History in Balboa Park, 
San Diego. Right next door is the famous outdoor zoo with its tropical 
setting, like Chicago’s zoo at Brookfield, only more spectacular. The museum 
has a fine display of mounted birds of the county, many of them in habitat 
groups, and it is headquarters for all the local nature societies. I was 
sorry to miss their Christmas bird census when they tallied more than 100 
species. 
My own ramblings were mostly afoot and within a radius of three or 
four miles of our cottage. That doesn’t sound like very much; but in that 
radius I had the ocean beach, sea cliffs and salt marshes; cultivated fields 
and orchards; streets of the village, and the chaparral-covered hills of the 
back country. The place seemed to be teeming with birds. The ocean and 
its birds I love best. 
Illinois shorebirds are mostly miniatures, the sandpeeps of our beaches, 
river margins, and mudflats. Shorebirds of the west are large in com- 
parison, though a 20-inch godwit or avocet is unremarkable for size against 
the immensities of California space and contours. 
Lake Michigan is colored like mother-of-pearl; but the sunny ocean off 
San Diego is blue like the heart of an opal, with an opal’s irridescence. 
Often I sat on the high cliffs or walked the wide sands at low tide. 
Wintering just at the foot of our ramp was a flock of 8 to 25 
marbled godwits, biggest of the sandpipers, cinnamon-colored shorebirds 
with long legs and long, upcurved bills. When they fly they make a bright 
splash of cinnamon in the sunshine, and when at rest they often stand 
solemnly with their chins drawn in against their puffy breasts. Someone 
has called them “the sanctimonious godwits” and they do look a bit stuffy. 
The godwits occupied the middle foreground of the beach, and near 
them were always a few black-bellied plover, robin sized, with stubby bills 
and a washed-out gray color all over, their winter plumage belying their 
names. Behind them on the rocks would be a Hudsonian curlew or two, 
somewhat smaller than the godwits and of more graceful habits, dark gray 
with long, downcurved bills. Above the curlews, bobbing along a wet, rocky 
ledge, would be a lone spotted sandpiper, our little peet-weet of the middle 
west. Gregarious in the summer, he’s a solitary bird in winter. 
Up the beach a short way from the godwits, and not so easily ap- 
