Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/116

98 eyeing his motions my glass falls unexpectedly on two sandpipers near him in the grass; pectoral sandpipers—grass-birds—I soon say to myself, with acute satisfaction. It is many years since I saw one. How small their heads look,—in contrast with the plover's,—and how thickly and finely their breasts are streaked! I remember the portrait in Nelson's "Birds of Alaska," with its inflated throat, a monstrous vocal sac, half as large as the bird itself. A graceful wooer!

They, too, are finding the tide a trouble, and no doubt are wishing the human intruder would take himself off. Now, in spite of my presence, one of them follows the other toward the land, scurrying from one bit of tussock to another, half wading, half swimming. Time and tide wait for no bird. Both they and the plover have given up all thoughts of eating. They have enough to do to keep their eyes upon me and the water.

The sandpipers, being smaller, make their retreat first. One, as he finds himself so near a stranger, is smitten with sudden