6 THE AUDUBON? BU BEE ian 
fertile clay have combined in the creation of an ecological association 
similar to that of a tidal flat. Superficially, it is a particularly barren 
waste, overgrown with clumps of weeds and grasses and sprawling mats 
of purslane, crouching low to the ground like the group of weathered 
buildings to the north. Yet a few naturalists and bird students. find 
the place congenial, leaving the sleeping city in the gray of morning 
to feel the pulse of life along one of Nature’s vital arteries. For this 
desolate place is unequalled by any other in the region for the va- 
riety of its bird-life during the migrations. 
Strolling along the shore some morning at the height of the mi- 
gration, you would surely have met with this oddly assorted band: the 
elderly Ornithologist with his mild, scholarly face and battered old 
field book; the Lawyer with his brief case, who had learned so well to 
manage his glass with one hand; others, too, who came and went like 
the ebb and flow of the tide. Sometimes in my own wanderings near 
the Bird Sanctuary I would chance upon one of them, and hear again 
about the Ornithologist at Montrose—about the Baird’s sandpipers 
and laughing gulls and lapland longspurs he had observed there. At 
last I decided to see for myself. . . 
It was one of those balmy October mornings of Indian summer. 
The sun was just appearing beyond the rim of the lake, and landward 
the rose-flushed metropolis was beginning to emerge from its misty 
veil. Meadow-larks were fluting in the distance; the dreamy songs of 
white-throats drifted from every shrub-thicket. I found the Birdman 
scanning a brush heap at the foot of the “dump hill.” 
“Hello!” I said, after stalking him, unheard, within ten feet; 
“anything interesting in there?” He looked around, caught the glint 
of my binoculars and returned the password with interest. No, noth- 
ing exciting—-only a few Tennessee warblers and juncos. A moment 
sooner I might have added a purple finch to my notes. He began to 
move slowly across the flat, dotted here with clumps of amaranth and 
crawl grass—and I found myself following, plying an endless array of 
questions. 
Was it really true he had seen glaucous and laughing gulls—that 
buff-breasted and Baird’s sandpipers had been abundant? Yes—all as 
plain as I standing there; beginning in August they had seen Baird’s 
at least fifty times—and last year the willets—. Here, suddenly, he 
broke off and held up his hand, listening. 
“Hark!” Both glasses swung on a tiny sandpiper, gleaming 
jewel-like across the cloudless blue. ‘Maybe only a pectoral, but I sus- 
pect that’s our Baird’s sandpiper right now!” I was all for following 
but dared not leave this new friend and guide, who knew the flat so 
well. 
Off to the right on the ground, a harsh churring call. As we be- 
gan to stalk it, I searched my memory; where had I heard that call 
last—under conditions so vastly different? It had been on a weedy bit 
of open prairie—a bitter day and snowing. All at once recollection 
came and at the same instant the ground upheaved before us; climb- 
ing the sky, an excited flock of sparrow-like birds went whirling mer- 
