erste ASUeLoU BON? BO -LeL Beret N 13 
or the pale, glaucous-winged gulls (the tan, immature ones) which straggle 
down from larger flocks farther north. Just once I saw a kittiwake, squat 
and tern-like among the gulls. He is usually found farther out on the kelp 
beds and ashore he seemed restless, soon winging his way straight out to 
sea. I heard that a kittiwake was seen on the shore of Lake Michigan that 
winter and I wondered how such a sea bird liked our middle west. 
The common tern of Lake Michigan is a rarity here, and our rarity, 
the Forster’s tern, is abundant in the west. Sometimes there were Caspian 
and royal terns. Occasionally there were ‘elegant terns from Mexico; and 
in migration season one hopes to see the world’s greatest traveler, the 
Arctic tern. None of the terns came often to our beach. 
Above the sands where the gulls settle is a high headland where the 
horizon lies in a great wide circle. And here I liked to watch the sunset, 
terns calling musically far out at sea, long black lines of cormorants in 
the sky fiying home to roost. The sun sinks rather swiftly into the Pacific, 
a red ball behind the mists. The sky turns an ethereal blue, and pale pink 
streamers light up the clouds and the snows on the distant mountain tops. 
Sometimes a thin little half-circle of a new moon comes out on the western 
horizon with both its horns upturned, to ride like a boat on the afterglow. 
In the salt marshes we saw avocets, scores of avocets! Remember the 
red-letter day when we saw one on the outskirts of Chicago? A_ striking 
black and white bird with blue legs in the winter, in the spring he adds a 
flush of rusty rose to his breast. Soon in April the avocets would be scat- 
tered or gone, but in their place would come another curious bird, the odd- 
ly graceful black-necked stilt. Karl Plath of the Brookfield Zoo called his 
three stilts “the three graces.” Everybody likes them, but all the bird 
watchers are especially glad when spring has come to southern California 
and the stilts are again in the salt marshes, house-keeping. 
Spring comes to California in April. When I arrived in December the 
hills were brown, overlaid with lavender shadows and hung with purple 
mists. When I left the first of March the hills and valleys were verdantly, 
verdantly green, after our copious and rather cold winter rains. 
During the long dry years the seeds of the wildflowers lay dormant, but 
after the wet season there would be a fireworks of bloom. I had a card 
from home the first of April. The hills and valleys and deserts, it said, 
were filled with blossoms. The vacant lots around our cottage were car- 
peted with wildflowers in yellow, white, pink and blue. The California 
poppies I transplanted to our wild garden were cups of gold and the flam- 
ing eucalyptus trees were red with bloom. I was there another April, and 
I could see it now. 
In our winter garden we had hummingbirds, so many hummingbirds! 
They hovered over our trumpet flowers and jeweled the white blossoms of 
the common eucalyptus trees. Along in January, when you see a humming- 
bird high in the sky coming down like a dive bomber, you know that near- 
by a Mrs. Anna is sitting coyly in the bushes; spring is round the corner 
and the Anna hummingbirds are courting. The Anna is our only winter 
species. It is named for an Italian duchess, and the male is royally colored, 
with a red throat and forehead, and amethyst red which glances and 
