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BEACH GRASS 
 

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BEACH GRASS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES WENDELL TOWNSEND 
 
 Author of " Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes," "A Labrador Spring, 
 " In Audubon's Labrador," etc. 
 
 BOSTON 
 MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 
 
 1923 
 
COPYRIGHT • 1923 • BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Printed in September, 1923 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERIC. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. Days and Nights in the Dunes ... i 
 
 II. Tracks in the Sand 41 
 
 III. The Beach in Winter 80 
 
 IV. Ice and Snow in the Sand Dunes . . 95 
 V. Ice Formations in the Salt Marshes 102 
 
 VI. The Uplands in Winter iii 
 
 VII. A Winter Crow Roost 135 
 
 VIII. The Forest 162 
 
 IX. Swallows at Work and Play .... 214 
 
 X. Hawking 227 
 
 XI. Courtship in Birds 248 
 
 XII. On Certain Humanities 277 
 
 Index 307 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATE FACING PAGE 
 
 1. Sand Dunes in Winter Frontispiece 
 
 2. The Vendome Dune Overwhelmed by Sand 
 
 IN 1915 2 
 
 3. The Vendome Dune in 1918 2 
 
 4. The Camp Grove in 1913 3 
 
 5. The Camp Grove in 1921 3 
 
 6. Cirque Dune Changing to the Desert Form 4 
 
 7. a nunatak in the dunes 5 
 
 8. Desert Dune of the Camp Grove from the 5 
 
 North 5 
 
 9. Hudsonia in Blossom 8 
 
 10. Dusty Miller 8 
 
 11. The Dunes by Moonlight {twenty minute 
 
 exposure) 14 
 
 12. Beach Grass 14 
 
 13. Young Long-Eared Owl 28 
 
 14. Ancient Willow 28 
 
 15. Night Herons' Nests 32 
 
 16. Night Heron's Nest with Eggs 32 
 
 17. Tracks of Deer Walking in Hard Sand . 42 
 
 18. Tracks of Same Deer Running in Soft Sand 42 
 
 19. Deer Tracks in Hard Sand 43 
 
 20. Deer Tracks in Hard Sand 43 
 
 21. Deer Tracks in Soft Sand 43 
 
 22. Tracks OF Doe and Fawn about Water-Hole 43 
 
 vii 
 
VIU ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATE FACING PAGE 
 
 23. Fox Tracks and Ripple-Marks 50 
 
 24. Fox Diggings for Grubs 50 
 
 25. Dead Loon with Tracks of Crow, Skunk 
 
 AND Fox 51 
 
 26. Caterpillar Tracks on Steep Side of Dune 51 
 
 27. Muskrat Tracks 62 
 
 28. Muskrat Tracks 62 
 
 29. Tracks of Woodchuck and Pheasant on 
 
 February 6, 192 1 63 
 
 30. Rabbit Tracks 66 
 
 31. Gray Squirrel Tracks 66 
 
 32. Dead White-Footed Mouse and Tracks . 67 
 
 33. Seaside Goldenrod and Skunk Tracks . . 67 
 
 34. Cat Tracks 68 
 
 35. Skunk Tracks and Hole Dug for Grubs . 68 
 
 36. Tracks of a Horned Lark and of a Lazy 
 
 Crow 74 
 
 37. Tracks of Crow and of Young Toads . . 74 
 
 38. Tracks of Ring-Necked Plover, of Toad, 
 
 AND OF Crow Alighting 75 
 
 39. Tracks of Night Herons 75 
 
 40. Tracks of Herring Gull 78 
 
 41. Grasshopper and its Tracks and Tracks of 
 
 Savannah Sparrow 78 
 
 42. Incipient Ice-Wall at the Beach, January, 
 
 1922 86 
 
 43. The Ice- Wall at the Beach, January 6, 191 8 86 
 
 44. Ice- Wall Undercut 87 
 
 45. Ice- Wall Honeycombed and Darkened with 
 
 Sand 87 
 
 46. Ice- Wall, February 8, 1920 88 
 
 47. Ice- Wall, February 29, 1920 88 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS IX 
 
 plate facing page 
 
 48. 'Tuddingstone" Ice -Wall 89 
 
 49. "Cobblestone" Ice on the Beach .... 89 
 
 50. Ice- Wall and Pinnacled Rocks 92 
 
 51. Ice- Wall Battered BY THE Surf AT High Tide 92 
 
 52. Frost-Rime at the Beach 93 
 
 53. Ice Grotto 93 
 
 54. Dunes in Winter 96 
 
 55. Dunes after Ice- Storm 96 
 
 56. Snowdrift in Dunes 97 
 
 57. Stratified Drift of Sand and Snow ... 97 
 
 58. Frozen Sand Columns, "Toadstools" . . 98 
 
 59. Sand Kettle-Hole 98 
 
 60. Cracks in Sand over Snow 99 
 
 61. Frost Crack and Retreat of Dunes before 
 
 the Sea 99 
 
 62. A Creek in Winter at Low Tide .... 102 
 
 63. Vendome Dune from the Frozen Estuary 102 
 
 64. The Marsh in Winter 106 
 
 65. The Marsh by Moonlight (seven minute 
 
 exposure) 106 
 
 66. The Ice Ant-Eater 107 
 
 67. The Ice Bear 107 
 
 68. Birch Bent by Ice-Storm 122 
 
 69. Edge of "Forest" after Ice-Storm ... 122 
 
 70. Bushes and Trees in Ice-Storm. A Glacial 
 
 Kettle-Hole 128 
 
 71. Apple -Tree Gnawed by Rabbits and 
 
 Meadow-Mice 12S 
 
 72. Tracks of Crow Taking Flight 156 
 
 73. Crow Pellets Regurgitated 156 
 
 74. The "Forest" in 1906, Appearing above 
 
 THE Grass 162 
 
X ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PLATE FACING PAGE 
 
 75. TiiE "Forest" in 192 i {from the same point) 162 
 
 76. The Lean-To in the "Forest," April 4, 1915 172 
 
 77. Ice Arch in Marsh 172 
 
 78. Outline Drawings of Hawks 234 
 
 79. The Eeler at Ninety 284 
 
 80. The Sand Schooner 284 
 
 81. The Last of the "Edward S. Eveleth" . 288 
 
 82. The Sander . 288 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN "Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes" I made 
 note of intimate studies of such regions in 
 my sojourns at Ipswich, of the varied forms 
 and movements of the sand, of the growth and 
 origin of the salt marsh and of the life in the 
 dunes and the marshes both animal and vegetable. 
 In the following pages I have endeavored to set 
 forth additional studies in these same regions. 
 
 Chapters VII and XI appeared first in the 
 pages of the Auk, Chapter IX and part of Chap- 
 ter X in the Bulletin of the Essex County Orni- 
 thological Club, to both of which publications I 
 am indebted for permission to print here. 
 
 As in my other books, the Index will be found 
 to contain the scientific names of the plants and 
 animals mentioned. The illustrations are from 
 my own photographs. 
 
 I have called the present volume by the title of 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 "Beach Grass", partly because this grass is so char- 
 acteristic of the region and partly because of the 
 meaning of its scientific name — A?nmophila 
 arenaria — the sandy sand-lover. 
 
BEACH GRASS 
 
BEACH GRASS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Days and Nights in the Dunes 
 
 ''There is a rapture on the lonely shore^ 
 There is society^ where none intrudes^ 
 By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.'' 
 
 — Byron 
 
 THE DUNES are constantly changing 
 and always present scenes of interest 
 and beauty. The surface ripple-marks 
 formed in the bed of the wind and athwart its 
 course like the ripple marks in the sandy bed of a 
 stream, move with the current. The grains of 
 sand hurry up the gradually sloping side to wind- 
 ward, drop over the steeper leeward side and eddy 
 in the trough. These rippling, corded markings 
 are to be found wherever the sand is bare of vege- 
 tation, and record the direction of the present or 
 latest strong wind. Like snowdrifts, the sand 
 
2 BEACH GRASS 
 
 collects behind tufts of grass or bits of driftwood 
 and builds up into dunes. The dunes devoid of 
 binding grass or bushes — the desert dunes — move 
 in the direction of the strongest winds, those of 
 the winter months which blow from the north 
 towards the south. Like magnified ripple- 
 marks, the windward side is hard packed and 
 slopes upward at a gentle angle of about nine de- 
 grees, while the leeward side rests at the steeper 
 angle of repose of the sand, an angle df thirty- 
 two degrees. On this side each foot of the trav- 
 eller sinks deeply into the soft sand and starts it 
 rolling downward. 
 
 The two most striking examples of this desert 
 type of dune at Ipswich, described in my former 
 volume, still continue their devastating career. 
 The '"glacier" dune has buried still more of the 
 living pitch pine grove and has uncovered more 
 of the dead one. In its uncovering process, the 
 bleached skeleton of a horse has ben exposed to- 
 day, and its bones lie about among the relics of 
 trees where the animal laid itself down to die, 
 many years before. The other great desert dune, 
 the one near the mouth of the Essex River, has 
 
THE VENDOME DUNE OVERWHELMED BY SAND IN IQl^ 
 
 THE VENDOME DUNE IN I918 
 
THE CAMP GROVE IN I9I3 
 
 THE CAMP GROVE IN I92 
 
IN THE DUNES 3 
 
 swept on with greater rapidity, as a larger area 
 is now devoid of binding vegetation and is open 
 to all the winds of heaven. Little remains of the 
 birch grove, and the camp therein will shortly be 
 overwhelmed. The sand has doubtless advanced 
 at times at a faster rate than five feet a month in 
 winter, a rate formerly determined by measure- 
 ment and markings of individual trees. 
 
 Between these two, a dune has overwhelmed a 
 fisherman's shanty which formerly bore a weather- 
 beaten sign, — "The Vendome." Higher and 
 higher crept the sand until nothing was left ex- 
 posed but the ridgepole, and this finally disap- 
 peared. By a further shift and advance of the 
 sand, a bit of the ruins is now revealed on this 
 Vendome dune. 
 
 The reverse waves of sand, with their steeper 
 undercut surfaces to windward, held in place by 
 the binding roots and buried stalks of the beach 
 grass, have continued to cut backwards. These I 
 formerly called amphitheatre dunes, as they take 
 the shape of large or small amphitheatres. A 
 similar name, that of cirque dunes, might well be 
 adopted, for, like the glacial cirques cut out of 
 
4 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the rocks of mountains, their progress is partly 
 determined by undercutting and by "plucking," 
 — not by ice, however, but by the wind. Some 
 of these cirque dunes are changing to the desert 
 type as larger areas of sand, free from vegetation 
 on their windward sides, give freer scope to the 
 wind. 
 
 Irregular dunes, looking like snow-covered 
 mountain tops, pyramidal dunes cut on all sides, 
 and peaks well protected by the binding beach 
 grass are all to be found. Some of the latter 
 stand up like nunataks above the surface of a 
 glacier, or monadnocks on a worn down plain. 
 Eagle dune has constantly changed in outline, 
 disappearing like snow in the hot sunshine on the 
 windward northern side, to be built up to 
 leeward. 
 
 The outline of the beach itself is undergoing 
 many changes. The building of a stone and 
 cement breakwater opposite Little Neck at the 
 mouth of the Ipswich River has caused many 
 changes in its wake. The cove below, where one 
 of the Christmas wrecks occurred in 1909, has lost 
 an indention of at least a hundred yards and the 
 
A NUNATAK IN THE DUNES 
 
 DESERT DUNE OF THE CAMP GROVE FROM THE NORTH 
 
 \ 
 
IN THE DUNES 5 
 
 shore has become almost straight. Farther to the 
 south, the rebound from this building out has 
 carried away fifty or sixty feet of the end of a 
 driveway to the shore, and exposed a cross section 
 of dunes in a low cliff. In 1911, I found the 
 distance from the northern corner of the light- 
 house lot was a thousand and ninety feet from 
 high water mark. In December, 1920, it was 
 only six hundred and thirty feet. Warning tres- 
 pass signs, like King Canute's commands, have 
 been of no avail. They have been washed away 
 by the advancing sea. 
 
 In winter this cliff of sand, solidified by frost, 
 is undercut by the waves, cracks a foot or two 
 from the edge and long sections sink down. In 
 this way the recession is rapid. The pathway 
 from the lighthouse, after traversing the dunes, 
 formerly passed through a broad stretch of low- 
 lying upper beach. Now that the beach is cut 
 back, the path over the dunes is shown in section 
 like a U-shaped hanging valley. 
 
 Still farther to the south the beach has built 
 out on a shore line of about half a mile, and suc- 
 cessive waves of dunes mark the old beach lines. 
 
6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 A great plane of wind-swept sand awaits the 
 growth of beach grass and the building up of 
 dunes, but may succumb to the waves before this 
 occurs. Again the swing of the shore line beyond 
 this plane has cut into the older dune-covered 
 beaches and has revealed in section timbers of old 
 wrecks, once on the shore, and the remains of a 
 fisherman's dory long buried by the sand. Be- 
 yond this the beach line is nearly straight, for the 
 outlying Ipswich bar comes to an end, the swing 
 of the river no longer exerts itself, its mean- 
 ders have ceased and it has escaped to sea. It 
 is dangerous to interfere with the course of a 
 river. The consequences are far reaching. 
 
 Although many bushes and trees are over- 
 whelmed by the sand every year, the total 
 amount of vegetation in the Ipswich dunes, de- 
 scribed in the former volume, appears to be in- 
 creasing. In the last ten years the groves of 
 pitch pines have augmented very much in area, 
 extending towards the south whither the pine 
 seeds are carried by the strong northerly winds. 
 Many of the cranberry bogs — natural ones, not 
 man-made — have grown up to bushes, and here 
 
IN THE DUNES 7 
 
 I have added a new bush and a new tree to the 
 list — the buttonbush and the red oak. The 
 dusty miller, a naturalized emigrant to these 
 shores, has increased and multiplied. The Hud- 
 sonia is as beautiful at all seasons as ever. The 
 two clumps of red birches and of rhodora still 
 keep their station, but the few square feet of 
 bearberry have disappeared from my ken, whether 
 overwhelmed by the sand, or merely lost, I know 
 not. 
 
 It is devoutly to be hoped that no enthusiast 
 will ever introduce foreign trees or shrubs to dis- 
 turb the natural flora of these dunes. Such an 
 event would be viewed by a naturalist almost in 
 the nature of a calamity. 
 
 Growing near the edge of the dunes at the 
 foot of Castle Hill is a willow of great age, a 
 veteran, with split and hollow bole, unable 
 longer to hold up its great branches which rest 
 on the ground. In touching the ground it has 
 renewed its life like Antseus of old or like the 
 banyan tree, and has taken root and sent up 
 fresh and vigorous willow saplings. It is re- 
 lated of the early colonists that they brought 
 
8 BEACH GRASS 
 
 over from England willow wands which they 
 stuck in the ground to grow, and I like to think 
 that Winthrop the younger, who owned all this 
 region, may have planted this tree. There are 
 three other willows of the same great age and de- 
 crepitude but with the same vigor of renewed 
 youth, two side by side higher up on Castle Hill, 
 the other on the side of Sagamore Hill. The 
 pair on Castle Hill are much broken with age. 
 The trunk of one is fourteen feet, seven inches in 
 circumference, the other seventeen feet nine 
 inches in circumference — almost six feet in diam- 
 eter. 
 
 A mirage of the distant coast and of vessels on 
 the sea is a common phenomenon at Ipswich 
 beach as in all seashore regions. Cape Ann is 
 often distorted by mirage and the low shores and 
 houses of the New Hampshire coast are elevated 
 so that they appear like lofty cliffs, interrupted 
 with numerous water-falls. The distant Isles of 
 Shoals, visible only on clear days, are raised up 
 so as to look like a city, dominated by the lofty 
 lighthouse column. Mt. Agamentacus in Maine 
 resembles a huge and flattened inverted bowl. 
 
HUDSONIA IN BLOSSOM 
 
 DUSTY MILLER 
 
IN THE DUNES 9 
 
 Sometimes it seems suspended between sky and 
 sea. On days when the sea is dark blue and the 
 sky pale blue, fading to white at the horizon, dis- 
 tant shores and hulls of vessels often appear 
 lifted up, and a narrow ribbon of white sky 
 stretches beneath. 
 
 All are familiar with the classical tale of mi- 
 rage in the desert, which simulates a lake of 
 water to the thirsty traveller. Several times I 
 have seen a similar mirage at Ipswich beach. 
 One was so perfect that I was completely de- 
 ceived, and wondered how this lake of calm, un- 
 ruffled water could have sprung up over night in 
 the expanse of sand. The illusion was intensi- 
 fied by some gulls who appeared to be wading 
 and swimming in the water. As I approached, 
 the lake receded and finally vanished. 
 
 At night there is a gentle mystery and a sense 
 of primeval grandeur in the sand dunes that sur- 
 passes the mystery and the grandeur of the day. 
 It is good for the soul to escape from the conven- 
 tionalities of life and lose itself in darkness in 
 this waste of sand. Like a wolf, turning and 
 shaping his form in the grass before he lies down. 
 
lo BEACH GRASS 
 
 so the dune-lover shapes his form in the sand, 
 hollowing places for his shoulders and hips. Ly- 
 ing thus in his mold, securely wrapt in his 
 blanket, on the crest of a dune wave, he sees the 
 sun set, the blue eclipse of the sky by the earth 
 rise in the East, and the pink glow overhead and 
 in the West gradually fade. Swallows in strag- 
 gling bands and in great multitudes, hastening to 
 their night roost, skim close by, sometimes within 
 a hair's breadth of his face. The dark, ungrace- 
 ful forms of night herons pass over with slow 
 wing-flaps and discordant croaks, and the stars 
 come out until the whole vault of heaven is 
 aglow. Those who dwell in caves, in deep can- 
 yons or in rooms in city streets, know not the 
 brilliancy of the heavens as revealed to those 
 who lie out under the stars. They know not : 
 
 ''The silence that is in the starry sky. 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills''' 
 
 The laughing cry of the loon comes to his ears 
 from the sea and the noisy clamor of a great 
 company of herring gulls, gossiping with each 
 other as they settle down for a night on the 
 
IN THE DUNES 1 1 
 
 shore. Sandpipers and plovers whistle as they 
 fly over, and the lisping notes of warblers, mi- 
 grating from the sterile cold of the North, drop 
 from above. Forming a continuous background 
 to these voices is the boom and the crash of the 
 waves on the sea beach. 
 
 All too soon he sinks into a gentle slumber, to 
 awake perchance in the night and hear the pass- 
 ing birds still calling to each other, and the surf 
 still booming, and to watch the flickering rays 
 of the aurora waving its ghostly arms overhead, 
 or a meteor as it streaks across the sky. At dawn 
 he arouses himself and finds everything about him 
 soaked in dew. The radiation into the clear 
 cloudless sky has reduced the temperature many 
 degrees with the consequent condensation of 
 moisture. Beads of dew stand out over his 
 blanket, the grass blades drip with it and pit the 
 sand below, and his frying-pan, beside the cold, 
 sand-quenched fire, is dotted with drops of water. 
 He has covered his binoculars, note-book case 
 and knife with his hat and has saved them from 
 a soaking. 
 
 The air is crisp and cold. Tree swallows and, 
 
12 BEACH GRASS 
 
 later, barn swallows rise up in clouds from the 
 dune thicket near at hand and salute the sun 
 which, although still invisible from the sand, 
 lights up their plumage on high. The red glow 
 in the East begins to pale. It loses its brilliant 
 carmine hue, fades to rose and to yellow and to 
 cold straw color, and the great globe of the sun 
 appears above the horizon. 
 
 It is time for him to arise if he would take 
 advantage of the oblique rays of the sun to study 
 the story of the night in the tracks in the sand. 
 The sand is moist with dew and holds every 
 faintest impression like molders' wax. The 
 wind has not yet arisen to mar these impressions 
 by drying and crumbling them, or by filling them 
 with blowing sand. The oblique rays of the 
 sun, casting shadows in the faintest indentations, 
 bring out with startling clearness tracks that are 
 all but invisible when the sun is overhead. 
 
 Near at hand are tracks of small birds that 
 have paused for a moment, but have departed in 
 haste alarmed by the attributes of man. An 
 unsuspecting white-footed mouse has jumped 
 along, leaving the tracks of a miniature rabbit. 
 
IN THE DUNES 13 
 
 A plodding toad, patiently pursuing its direct 
 course, has traced its footsteps near the head of 
 the sleeper. A skunk, that knight of the night 
 sans peur, on account of his armor of scent, and, 
 in this case, at least, sans reproche, has ambled 
 leisurely by. One may be sure that no fox or 
 deer tracks will be found near, except perhaps 
 on the windward side. The sense of smell in 
 these animals is too keen to permit them to run 
 any risks. 
 
 At the time of the full moon the fascination of 
 the sand dunes is increased to a superlative de- 
 gree. The whiteness of the sand augments the 
 brilliancy of the moonlight, just as is the case 
 when the landscape is white with snow. Such a 
 night was that of September 25 and 26, 1920. 
 It was calm and warm, 68° Farenheit by the 
 cricket thermometer.^ As I wandered alone 
 about the dunes, listening to the voices of the 
 birds passing overhead, and of those on the shore 
 and sea, I was alert for a glimpse of night- 
 wandering animals whose tracks were clearly vis- 
 ible by moonlight. Exposing a photographic 
 
 1 See page 2oi. 
 
14 BEACH GRASS 
 
 plate for twenty minutes to the mysterious scene, 
 I patiently waited and watched during this in- 
 terval but saw no track-maker. The sky on the 
 sandy horizon — on the crest of a sand wave — 
 looked black in comparison with the white sand, 
 but this starless darkness soon merged into the 
 vault of the heavens with its suggestion of blue, 
 studded sparsely with stars. Only those of 
 greater magnitude showed in the brilliant light 
 of the moon; the light of the lesser ones was 
 quenched. We pay for the light of the full 
 moon by loss of starlight just as we pay for sun- 
 shine by loss of moonlight. About five in the 
 morning the moon set large and red, and the 
 lesser as well as the greater stars blazed out, and 
 the path of the Milky Way appeared across the 
 heavens. 
 
 After a period of unfavorable wind or weather, 
 ?. perfect night may come when the floodgates of 
 bird migration are opened, and the pent-up mul- 
 titudes, waiting for this chance, pour along the 
 aerial channels. Such a night followed Septem- 
 ber 9, 1916, and it was my good fortune to spend 
 it in the dunes and on the beach. The air. 
 
THE DUNES BY MOONLIGHT {twenty mimite exposure) 
 
 BEACH GRASS 
 
IN THE DUNES 15 
 
 blown as clear as crystal by a sparkling north- 
 west wind, and illuminated by the full moon, 
 and its reflection from the sea and white sand, 
 made the night almost as light as day. There 
 was a brilliancy and ethereal quality suggestive 
 of fairyland. Such nights as these fill one with 
 rapture at the marvelous beauty and mystery of 
 the sand dunes. 
 
 During the evening it was evident that a large 
 migration of small birds was taking place along 
 this highway by the seashore as the air was filled 
 with bird calls that showered down from the sky, 
 but, peer as I would, the birds themselves re- 
 mained invisible, notwithstanding the apparent 
 brilliancy of the air. Only as they cross the face 
 of the moon are such small bodies to be discerned. 
 
 The tide was at its lowest ebb and, on the 
 hard, broad floor of wet sand scattered shore 
 birds were feeding. The short sharp note of the 
 sanderling, the rasping ai-ah of the turnstone and 
 the double whistle of the ring-necked plover 
 sounded from time to time above the roar of the 
 waves. No need for these birds to migrate by 
 night as they are well able to feed at that period. 
 
i6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 1 made a salty, springy bed of dried eel grass, 
 thatch and Irish moss on the soft upper beach, 
 on which I spread my sleeping bag. Although 
 at evening and at morning the sea was separated 
 from my bed by nearly a quarter of mile of 
 beach, about midnight I was dimly aware that 
 the waves were pounding and roaring ominously 
 not far from my feet. At this uncertain time of 
 night the bird calls above still proclaimed the 
 passing hosts. 
 
 When I awoke for the day I watched the sun 
 rise over the sea, and I realized in the absence of 
 bird calls that the flight for the night was over, 
 and that the birds had settled for the day for rest 
 and food. 
 
 My steps were first directed to the nearest 
 thicket, for it was evident that most of the birds 
 would seek the shelter of trees and bushes. On 
 the way I came upon some pipits that had ar- 
 rived during the night, very probably from Lab- 
 rador, and had found congenial surroundings on 
 the bare sand amid tufts of beach grass. In a 
 thicket less than half an acre in extent of alder 
 and gray birch, with an undergrowth of bayberry, 
 
IN THE DUNES 17 
 
 wild rose, staghorn sumach and poison ivy, sur- 
 rounded by a threatening mass of bare dunes, 
 was an assembly of birds that made the day a 
 red-letter one for me, and still thrills me with 
 pleasure when I think of it. The trees and 
 bushes and the bare white patches of sand be- 
 neath seemed filled with birds — not a flock of one 
 kind but of many different kinds. For several 
 hours I wandered enchanted through this di- 
 minutive grove, retracing and crossing my steps 
 again and again, led on by the sight and calls 
 of the birds. At times I looked down on the tops 
 of the trees from the encoaching dunes, and at 
 times I sat on the sand under the trees and 
 watched the birds come and go about me. 
 
 The interesting group of warblers took first 
 rank in this assembly. Myrtle warblers and 
 black-polls, both in their simple winter plum- 
 ages, were abundant. One myrtle warbler was, 
 however, in the full regalia of the spring. It is 
 not surprising that the black-poll in the fall was 
 at first unrecognized by Audubon and called the 
 autumnal warbler. In the autumn the country 
 is often flooded with them and their characteris- 
 
i8 BEACH GRASS 
 
 tic call notes are to be heard on every hand. 
 Their plumage at this time is entirely unlike that 
 of the spring. A redstart, a Maryland yellow- 
 throat, a Nashville and a parula warbler were of 
 this company, and magnolia warblers, spreading 
 their tails and showing the white median bands, 
 were common. In a dark thicket, a splendid 
 male black-throated blue warbler revealed him- 
 self to me by the white spots on his wings. Pres- 
 ently he hopped into the light where I could ad- 
 mire his trig figure, black throat and blue back. 
 The commoner black-throated green warbler in 
 winter plumage with his black throat entirely 
 concealed by white feather tips was represented 
 by several individuals. 
 
 I have left to the end three rarer species of 
 warblers, any one of which is worth a long trip 
 to see. One of these, the Tennessee warbler, is, 
 in the adult stage, one of the most obscurely 
 marked of all warblers, a plain gray and white 
 bird, but the two individuals in this favored 
 grove were young of the year, and so yellow that 
 an observer, unfamiliar with this phase, would 
 be sorely puzzled. The first time I saw this ju- 
 
IN THE DUNES 19 
 
 venile plumage was on a steamer bound back 
 from Labrador, where, during a fog, a couple of 
 young and very yellow Tennessee warblers flitted 
 about the deck almost within arm's reach. 
 
 The two other warblers are both strikingly 
 marked birds in full adult male plumage, but are 
 both difficult to recognize in their juvenile dress. 
 One, the bay-breasted, in this phase resembles 
 strikingly the black-poll warbler in its autumnal 
 phase, but the individual who displayed itself to 
 my delighted gaze and turned with great accom- 
 modation first one side and then the other to me, 
 showed a faint streak of reddish brown or bay 
 on each side. 
 
 The last of this group, a Cape May warbler, 
 I saw at four different times and places in the 
 grove, and I am still in doubt whether it was al- 
 ways the same bird or four different ones. It is 
 perhaps safe to say that there were at least two 
 individuals. The Cape May warbler in juvenile 
 plumage has but the faintest traces of the tiger- 
 like markings on its face, and, with its spotted 
 sides and yellow rump, it resembles rather closely 
 the maiinolia warbler in the same stage. The 
 
20 BEACH GRASS 
 
 black spots are less black and the yellow of the 
 breast less vivid than in the magnolia warbler, 
 and, instead of having a subterminal band of 
 white on its tail, the Cape May has white on the 
 outside feathers only. 
 
 Warblers are fascinating birds and form an in- 
 teresting and clearly marked group. They are 
 abundant not only in number of individuals but 
 in number of species. In the full nuptial plum- 
 age of spring and early summer many of them 
 are as striking in the brilliancy of their coloring 
 and markings as some of the tropical orchids. 
 One would suppose they would be well known 
 by those who live in or visit the country, but it 
 is an astonishing fact that they are rarely seen 
 except by those who look for them and have cul- 
 tivated habits of observation. I am confident 
 that many people would have walked through 
 this grove of mine, filled with birds as it was, 
 and seen none there, or have noticed a few "spar- 
 rows." Sometimes a brilliantly arrayed war- 
 bler, perhaps a redstart or a magnolia warbler, 
 species which pour through our groves in thou- 
 sands, suddenly pops out within a few feet of 
 
IN THE DUNES 21 
 
 such a person, directly in their field of vision so 
 that they actually see it and can not help them- 
 selves, and they report they have seen "a most 
 extraordinary bird, doubtless a waif blown from 
 the tropics." As to the call notes and song of 
 warblers, they are as if they did not exist to such 
 a person. Even if he is silent and does not 
 drown out the bird voices by his own, his audi- 
 tory apparatus appears to be insensible to the 
 notes of warblers and of nearly all other birds. 
 However, he does not realize his loss. 
 
 In the group of thrushes, four representatives 
 were present in this oasis, namely the robin 
 and veery and olive-backed and gray-cheeked 
 thrushes. The last named bird looked so small 
 I am inclined to think it was a Bicknell's rather 
 than an Alice's thrush. These two birds are 
 alike in plumage with gray cheeks, but the Bick- 
 nell's is a little bit smaller. 
 
 A solitary vireo with his dark, slate-blue head 
 and his white eye-rings appeared at close range. 
 In the sparrow family, juncos with their twitter- 
 ing notes and flashing white tail feathers were 
 most in evidence. The whistling call of the 
 
22 BEACH GRASS 
 
 white-throated sparrow came out of the thicket 
 and it was apparent they were present in consid- 
 erable numbers. Although both of these birds 
 have on rare occasions bred as far south as Essex 
 County, it is unusual to find them in numbers at 
 such an early date in the fall. A few Savannah 
 sparrows and goldfinches completed the list of 
 twenty-two different species in this circumscribed 
 area. A half a dozen more species are, however, 
 to be added as they were seen or heard as 
 they flew over: namely, purple finch, tree and 
 barn swallow, herring gull, pipit, and duck 
 hawk. The hawk struck terror to all the 
 birds in the grove as he skimmed low over the 
 trees, but my presence, probably, prevented a 
 catastrophe. 
 
 Nearly all the twenty-eight species enumer- 
 ated were birds that are not found in summer in 
 this sand dune region and it is probable that even 
 the Maryland yellow-throat, robin, song and 
 Savannah sparrows, purple finches, and gold- 
 finches, tree and bam swallows were also mi- 
 grants from the North. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that all my nights spent 
 
IN THE DUNES 23 
 
 in the sand dunes have been as poetical as the fore- 
 going. Two stand out in my memory that were 
 far from it. On one of these, in a summer of 
 plentiful rains, I fashioned my mold in the lee 
 of a clump of beach grass on the top of a dune 
 and composed myself to sleep. But, alas, mos- 
 quitoes in great multitudes gathered about my 
 devoted head. Oil of citronella, plentifully ap- 
 plied, failed to deter them — I could hear them 
 splashing in it on my face. Their actions re- 
 minded me of Labrador. A move to the breezy 
 side of the grass in a seal-like manner, by squirm- 
 ing and flopping in my sleeping-bag was equally 
 unsuccessful. I then took up my bed and 
 walked to what I considered the most wind- 
 swept spot on the side of the dune. But, as 
 grains of sand driven by the wind come to rest 
 behind any obstruction, so the mosquitoes gath- 
 ered in my lee and proceeded to the slaughter. I 
 tried several equally unsuccessful moves during 
 the night which was also enlivened by several 
 showers. 
 
 On another occasion when the wind was a gen- 
 tle and a warm one from the southwest, I went 
 
24 BEACH GRASS 
 
 to sleep on the northerly side of a dune, very 
 comfortably wrapt in a thin blanket. In a few 
 hours I was awakened, chilled to the marrow of 
 my bones by a strong wind from the cold north- 
 west. Several times that night I moved, chased 
 around the dune by the searching and changeable 
 wind, and always cold. To complete my dis- 
 comfiture, my mug of hot coffee at breakfast, 
 which I had tasted only in anticipation, over- 
 turned and the delectable fluid sank into the il- 
 limitable sand. I must, however, have had con- 
 siderable sleep on both of these nights as I felt 
 fresh and rested the next day, and I suffered no 
 ill effects in this germless air from being, on the 
 second occasion, so thoroughly chilled. I was 
 certainly cold but caught no cold. 
 
 It has been said with truth that adventures are 
 generally due to insufficient preparation. If I 
 had brought a head-net on the first night and 
 more bed clothing on the second, I should have 
 had no adventures to relate. 
 
 The most inspiring and exciting sound made 
 by migrating birds is that which comes from a 
 flock of Canada geese. In the distance a faint 
 
IN THE DUNES 25 
 
 sound is heard, it comes nearer and nearer — the 
 sound of many voices — of hounds in the chase, 
 of brazen instruments, the honking of geese, a 
 multitude talking at once. The sound grows 
 louder and louder. I rush out of a bushy 
 thicket, where the trees obscure the sky, and 
 climb to the peak of the nearest dune. Here 
 come the birds, a hundred or more of them, now 
 in a long line abreast, now in perfect V-shape, 
 now massing together in a loose flock. They 
 sweep on in glorious strength of wing and pass 
 overhead and the babel of tongues is almost a 
 deafening clangor, and the sight of the great 
 birds, each with his long neck stretched eagerly 
 towards his home in the northland, becomes an 
 inspiration. The voices grow less loud, become 
 faint and occasional and then cease. All is quiet 
 again but the sight and the sound of this migrat- 
 mg flock are long to be treasured in the memory. 
 
 "How oft against the sunset sky or moon 
 I watched that moving zig-zag of spread wings 
 In unforgotten autumns gone too soon. 
 In unforgotten springs! 
 
26 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ''Creatures of desolation! Far they fly 
 Above all lands bound by the curling foam. 
 In misty fens, wild moors and trackless sky 
 These wild things have their home, 
 
 ''Dark flying rune against the western glow 
 It tells the sweep and loneliness of things, 
 Symbol of autumns vanished long ago, 
 Symbol of coming springs^ 
 
 The work of the Audubon Societies is bearing 
 fruit. No longer are the plumes torn from the 
 nesting egret. The bird is increasing again in 
 numbers and, after the breeding season in the 
 South, occasionally wanders to the North. In the 
 last dozen years there have been several incur- 
 sions of this great bird from the South. On an 
 October day in 1919 I was so fortunate as to 
 flush one of these splendid birds from a bog in 
 the dunes. Pure white with the exception of 
 black legs and yellow bill, as large as the great 
 blue heron, it was an impressive sight as it rose, 
 slowly doubled up its long neck, extended behind 
 its black legs, and flew out over the marshes. An 
 hour later, from my house, I discovered it wad- 
 
IN THE DUNES 27 
 
 ing about in the tide on the marshes. Fifteen 
 years ago this bird, if discovered by a gunner, 
 would have been shot and taken to a taxidermist 
 to be stuffed. Now-a-days these birds give joy 
 to an increasing class of nature lovers, and they 
 are able to repeat their visits. In the summer of 
 iy2i, no less than six of these beautiful birds 
 were to be seen in the salt marshes. 
 
 An interesting migration day in the dunes fell 
 to my lot in mid-March. Some six short-eared 
 owls were tarrying on their way North. Never 
 before had I seen more than two in a day's travel 
 in the dunes. The seaside grasshopper and toad, 
 the Ipswich sparrow and piping plover are well 
 adapted to concealment in the sand, but the 
 short-eared owl surpasses them all. Like them 
 it is somewhat sandy colored, but it bears at times 
 a most striking resemblance to a lichen-crusted 
 stump or a snow-flecked bit of driftwood. An 
 ornithological friend was enjoying with me the 
 sight of these birds and commented on their close 
 resemblance to stumps as they sat on the dunes 
 amid tufts of beach grass. One of them we had 
 watched and seen fly away, and, after we had re- 
 
28 BEACH GRASS 
 
 marked that an obvious stump near, with patches 
 of snow on it, closely resembled a sitting 
 owl, the stump opened its wings and flew 
 away I 
 
 That great owl from the white North, the 
 snowy owl, I have been privileged to see a num- 
 ber of times in the dunes, and have described 
 some of these encounters in "Sand Dunes and 
 Salt Marshes." On a January day in 1913 I 
 saw one of these great birds, a rather dark in- 
 dividual, sitting on a dune top near Eagle Dune. 
 I stalked him within fifty yards, when he arose, 
 and, in the strong wind, poised motionless like a 
 kite. His great wings and tail were spread to 
 the full extent and the tips of the larger feathers 
 of the wings were bent up with the air pressure. 
 Alternately gliding and flapping, he skimmed low 
 over the beach grass, occasionally stretching his 
 neck and lifting his great round head above the 
 level of the back and looking about. Twice he 
 alighted on the dunes, sitting not erect as this 
 bird is usually depicted, but with body inclined 
 at the angle of about forty-five degrees. The 
 next December I watched another snowy owl in 
 

 
 .;-i»lk'' ^'^-rW^ 
 
 ' ^^^^^''V •■'•*^«' 
 
 "^^\ ^ _,'»k .;^^n9P^ 
 
 i ; ^:'Ml?i:'<- ■. ' 
 
 
 
 YOUNG LONG-EARED OWL 
 
 ANCIENT WtLLOW 
 
IN THE DUNES 29 
 
 the dunes mobbed by a large flock of snow bunt- 
 ings that swirled about him and darted down 
 toward him as he sat serene on a dune top. The 
 only time I have seen this bird alight in a tree 
 was on a December day in 1918 when one flew 
 over the marshes within plain sight of my house, 
 cHud perched on the tallest tree on a marsh island. 
 
 In June, 1917, a pair of long-eared owls nested 
 in the pitch pine grove to the northeast of Wig- 
 wam Hill. They occupied an old crow's nest in 
 a pine about twenty feet from the ground, and 
 brought up three solemn looking young that were 
 at first clad in white down. Their faces were 
 dark and their downy ear tufts were plainly vis- 
 ible even at this early age. One of the old birds 
 flew anxiously about among the trees, uttering 
 low, complaining notes which suggested the bark- 
 ing of a puppy. 
 
 The interesting fact about this family of owls 
 was their diet, and of this they made a very good 
 record in the numerous pellets of undigested food 
 that they cast up and were found around the foot 
 of the tree. Their habits were not hygienic, for 
 the nest itself was covered, several layers deep, 
 
30 BEACH GRASS 
 
 like stratifications, with the fur, feathers, and 
 bones of their victims. All of these I collected 
 with care after the birds had left the nest, and 
 sent them to the Biological Survey in Washing- 
 ton for identification. The result was most sur- 
 prising and is interesting to record here. This 
 family of owls had been fed on two red-winged 
 blackbirds, one each of the following kinds of 
 sparrows — the sharp-tailed, Savannah, vesper 
 and chipping — on two song sparrows, one che- 
 wink, one pine warbler, one Maryland yellow- 
 throat and two other unidentified warblers, two 
 thrushes, a brown thrasher and four other small 
 birds not identified; also on three short-tailed 
 shrews, one white-footed mouse, eleven jumping 
 mice, and eleven meadow mice. In other words, 
 the refuse from the owl table showed that over 
 thirteen different kinds of birds had been eaten 
 and twenty-three individuals; also four species 
 of mammals and twenty-five individuals. 
 
 Fisher in his classic on the "Hawks and Owls 
 of the United States" says: *'The Long-eared 
 Owl is one of our most beneficial species, destroy- 
 ing vast numbers of injurious rodents and seldom 
 
IN THE DUNES 31 
 
 touching insectivorous birds." This dune fam- 
 ily belongs in another category, and Mr. E. \N'. 
 Nelson of the Biological Survey, commenting on 
 these findings, wrote me that "It is very unusual 
 to find the long-eared owl feeding upon birds to 
 such an extent. In a large number of pellets ex- 
 amined from winter roosts of these birds, we 
 have found the bird remains making up consid- 
 erably less than ten per cent, of the total animal 
 contents. The owls in question must have had 
 exceptional opportunities to secure birds, and the 
 breeding season may also have had some effect 
 in producing this habit." The Ipswich dunes 
 are, as I have always maintained, particularly 
 good regions for birds, and these owls seem to 
 have had the instincts of collectors. 
 
 There are several heronries near Ipswich, one 
 at Plum Island, one at Hamilton, one at North 
 Beverly, but an interesting and, I believe, the 
 largest is one I have watched from its beginning 
 in a grove in the Ipswich dunes. This grove is 
 composed almost entirely of pitch pines, but 
 there are a few white birches and white maples 
 among them. The fishing is good in the neigh- 
 
32 BEACH GRASS 
 
 boring creeks and estuaries, and night herons 
 from distant heronries have been in the habit of 
 taking their noonday siestas in these trees for 
 many years. In the summer of 1916, I found 
 several pairs had nested there, and counted 
 twenty-five nests. In 1917, I counted one hun- 
 dred and sixty-seven nests, and, as the number 
 of birds was rapidly increasing, I determined, in 
 1918, to make a careful census of nests after the 
 birds had flown. With the help of two boys, I 
 began one cold December day to count the nests 
 in each tree, and, that we might not count the 
 same tree twice, we tied a white string around 
 the trunk of each counted tree. This proved 
 slow work and very cold for the fingers. As 
 there was a light snow on the ground, we found 
 that by stamping the snow at the foot of the 
 trunk, we could quickly and effectually mark the 
 tree. In this way the count was accurate as far 
 as it went, but we probably overlooked a few 
 trees on the periphery of the roost. Here are 
 the results: 492 nesting trees containing one to 
 eight nests each, and a total of 761 nests. The 
 nests varied in size from thin, flimsy affairs to 
 
NIGHT HERONS NESTS 
 
 NIGHT herons' NEST WITH EGGS 
 
1 
 
 IN THE DUNES 33 
 
 thick bulky masses of twigs so completely inter- 
 woven as to stand a good deal of rough handling 
 without coming to pieces. 
 
 The point of vantage from which to view the 
 heronry at the height of the season is from the 
 top of Wigwam Hill. Below stretch the green 
 tops of the pines, dotted, as with splendid white 
 blossoms, by the beautiful birds that stand on 
 the tree-tops near their nests and brooding mates. 
 When one enters the heronry on foot, the scene 
 is not so enchanting, and one's ears are assailed 
 by strange and discordant sounds, one's nostrils 
 by odors ancient and hshlike. Everything is 
 whitewashed here and one must be wary. By 
 watching the actions of the nearly naked young 
 birds that climb about the branches, one becomes 
 convinced of their recent reptilian ancestry. 
 Tragedies among the young are common as 
 shown in the mummified corpses, caught by the 
 neck in the crotch of branches and swinging as 
 though from gibbets. Foxes get good hunting in 
 this region. 
 
 The inception and growth of this heronry has 
 been most interesting and well illustrates the ad- 
 
34 BEACH GRASS 
 
 vantages of protection. A still more striking 
 change has taken place in this region in the case 
 of terns, the swallows of the sea. Fifty years 
 ago terns of various species laid their eggs on 
 the sand of Ipswich beach above the tides. 
 Common, arctic and least terns formed an inter- 
 esting colony which was described in 1870 in his 
 ''Naturalist's Guide" by Charles J. Maynard, the 
 discoverer of the Ipswich sparrow. Wanton per- 
 secution by gunners, the shooting of the birds in 
 sport and the taking of the eggs for food and as 
 curiosities, and, above all, the systematic slaugh- 
 ter for millinery purposes extirpated these birds 
 here, and brought them to the verge of extinction 
 along the whole Atlantic coast. 
 
 As regards the subject of bird protection, it is 
 interesting and encouraging to compare the state 
 of mind and moral sense of people in general at 
 that time and today. The sportsman, with a 
 long autumn, winter and spring season, as a rule 
 respected the close season for game birds, but for 
 birds, whose value today is admitted to be 
 largely aesthetic, he thought nothing. If he ex- 
 terminated them, there was no regret. They 
 
IN THE DUNES 35 
 
 were of no use, and, if they afforded good flying 
 marks, as did the terns, he had no scruples about 
 shooting them and leaving their beautiful bodies, 
 mangled and blood-stained, where they fell. He 
 did not even take the trouble to kill wounded 
 birds that had thus served as his target. If he 
 had feminine friends or relatives who would ap- 
 preciate the graceful wings for their hats, he felt 
 even virtuous in destroying the birds for these 
 trophies and the women thought no ill of the 
 practice. TTie fact that it was the fashion to 
 wear these wings in the hats dulled all thought 
 on the subject. The men who went into the 
 business of supplying the greedy millinery trade 
 felt that the cruelty involved, if they thought of 
 it at all, and the possible total destruction of the 
 birds, was fully justified by the dollars received. 
 If the adult terns were more easily shot when 
 their nests were invaded or their young put in 
 danger, then it was laudable to take advantage 
 of these circumstances. Any one having scru- 
 ples on this point was an unreasonable senti- 
 mentalist and did not deserve the rewards of 
 business. 
 
36 BEACH GRASS 
 
 Today all this is changed. Thanks to broader 
 views and the teachings of ornithologists in gen- 
 eral and of the Audubon Societies in particular, 
 and by reason of laws enacted through their ef- 
 forts, people are beginning to realize the justice 
 and importance of preserving these birds. Their 
 sense of moral fitness has been aroused, they be- 
 gin to feel the value of the birds from a purely 
 aesthetic point of view as adding beauty and in- 
 terest to the landscape, although few realize the 
 importance of preserving them as a sacred trust 
 for future generations. 
 
 In 1921, by the middle of May, terns had be- 
 come common at Ipswich beach, arriving from 
 the South. On June 12 there were over three 
 hundred there, mostly the common species but 
 a few roseate terns were to be seen. This latter 
 species is easily distinguished from the common 
 tern by its longer, slimmer shape, by its bill 
 which is wholly black, instead of being red with 
 a black tip, and by its voice, for it emits at fre- 
 quent intervals a rather sweet double plover-like 
 note — tu-wit — and a loud harsh scream that 
 closely resembles that made by tearing cloth. 
 
IN THE DUNES 37 
 
 On this June day I sat on the sand within 
 sixty yards of a flock of over a hundred terns 
 that had alighted on the water's edge. It was at 
 once apparent that the birds were preparing to 
 breed, as many of them were engaged in active 
 courtship. As the sexes are alike in plumage one 
 could distinguish the males from the females only 
 by their actions, but these actions were distinc- 
 tive. With short mincing steps a male would 
 strut before a demure female. His puffed out 
 neck and his head were stretched up to the full 
 extent, and his open bill was continually vibrat- 
 ing as he uttered rasping crrrs. His long tail 
 was cocked up between the wings which were ex- 
 tended from the body so that the shoulders stuck 
 out nearly horizontally. At times he side- 
 stepped, at times he pirouetted. Sometimes two 
 or more males were acting thus in a group by 
 themselves, as if each were trying to outvy the 
 others. Sometimes two would fly at each other 
 on the beach like game-cocks and rise and con- 
 tinue the flght in the air. Again a male would 
 return from fishing with a sand-lance drooped 
 from his bill, and, after eluding rivals who 
 
38 BEACH GRASS 
 
 sought to take the fish from him, he would alight 
 close to his beloved one and present her with the 
 choice morsel, following up his gift with court- 
 ship antics. She, meanwhile, calmly and ap- 
 parently without the least concern for him, swal- 
 lowed the tidbit. 
 
 I fully expected to find the terns laying their 
 eggs above the beach after such actions, but, no, 
 they left for other regions. I feel, however, that 
 it is only a question of a short time before the 
 terns return to their own. and again nest at Ips- 
 wich beach. 
 
 For many years I had enjoyed squatters' rights 
 in the dunes in the possession of a camp. This 
 was situated in the grove just described which 
 had furnished such a wealth of migrating birds. 
 It is near the southern end of the dunes, equi- 
 distant from the sea beach on the outside and the 
 beach of the estuary on the inside. In this camp, 
 and in tents near at hand, my family, some 
 young friends, a poll-parrot, a canary bird and I 
 spent August in 1912. We lived to a certain ex- 
 tent off the land and water. Fish, the common 
 clams and the larger sea clams, furnished much 
 
IN THE DUNES 39 
 
 of our food, and blackberries were abundant. A 
 pump in the camp brought us sweet, cold water 
 from a driven well of thirty feet, in which the 
 water level was just below the surface of the 
 sand. Dead wood in the grove and driftwood 
 on the beach furnished our fire. Our bathtub 
 was the Atlantic ocean. We generally slept in 
 our tents and in the camp in the grove, but at 
 times, as the mood seized us, around our camp 
 fire on the top of a dune, or on the edge of the 
 sea beach. The gulls and terns and sandpipers 
 were our constant companions. We lived a free 
 and open-air existence on the sand and in the 
 water, and we were well sunned, sanded, and 
 salted. 
 
 Many changes have taken place since that day. 
 The squatters are banished and their camps are 
 no more. Some of the shanties have been re- 
 moved bodily or in pieces by water, others like 
 'The Vendome," have been covered by the blow- 
 ing sand. A longer lease of life was granted to 
 my camp, but, in its isolation, it had been bat- 
 tered and looted by wandering clammers, and the 
 dunes are rapidly advancing to its destruction. 
 
40 BEACH GRASS 
 
 The greater part of the grove of trees has dis- 
 appeared — their dead tops may still be seen in 
 places nearly a hundred yards off in the sterile 
 dune. Already the sand is creeping close to the 
 house, and it is doomed. 
 
 But it is better so. There are all too few sea- 
 shore regions that are unspoiled by the hand of 
 man and those few are rapidly disappearing. 
 The electric car and the automobile bring people 
 in crowds to the seashore. A region of sand 
 dunes is covered with summer houses, tin cans 
 and Sunday newspapers, detestable to birds and 
 bird-lovers alike. Fortunate indeed are the birds 
 and bird-lovers who can wander in a region un- 
 marred and "unimproved," and grateful are they 
 to any one who can order such a state of affairs. 
 May it always remain sol 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Tracks in the Sand 
 
 ''In the sand of the hillocks by the loud sounding ocean 
 He followed their tracks at the break of the day.'' 
 
 — Anon. 
 
 IN "Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes" I had 
 something to say of tracks and tracking 
 in the dunes, illustrated by photographs. 
 Since this book was published I have continued 
 with ever increasing interest to track the deer and 
 the fox, the skunk and the mouse, the gull and 
 the crow, the toad and the grasshopper and others 
 of their ilk in the dunes, and shall here record 
 some of my findings. One never knows where 
 one may come on an interesting story in the sand 
 or one requiring some ingenuity to unravel. 
 
 Deer tracks are common in the dunes. In 
 1913, I wrote that this animal "thanks to the well 
 enforced protective laws, is more abundant in 
 densely settled eastern Massachusetts than it has 
 
 41 
 
42 BEACH GRASS 
 
 been for over a hundred years, and it is possible 
 that in some localities it is even more abundant 
 than has ever been the case. For not only 
 has white man ceased to persecute the deer, but he 
 has eliminated its natural enemies, such as 
 wolves, lynxes and panthers, as well as Indians." 
 Since 1912, there has been an open season every 
 fall of six days and the slaughter of deer at first 
 was so great that they were all but exterminated 
 from this region. In nine years two hundred 
 and twenty deer were shot in Essex County. 
 
 Of late years the deer have increased again, 
 and, although rarely seen, give evidence by their 
 tracks of much night wandering in the dunes. 
 Sometimes the tracks go straight, as if the animal 
 had his objective point clearly in mind. As he 
 walks his split hoof — his third and fourth toes — 
 curve together so that they nearly meet. Each 
 hind foot falls so exactly into the track of the fore 
 foot that a duplication of marks is rarely seen. 
 When he runs and bounds, the split hoof spreads 
 with the harder impact of the jumps, and the 
 third and fourth toes make almost parallel or 
 even diverging, instead of converging marks. At 
 
TRACKS OF DEER WALKING IN HARD SAND 
 
 TRACKS OF SAME DEER RUNNING IN SOFT SAND 
 
DEER TRACKS IN HARD SAND 
 
 DEER TRACKS IN HARD SAND DEER TRACKS IN SOFT SAND 
 
 TRACKS OF DOE AND FAWN ABOUT WATER-HOLE 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 43 
 
 these times, especially if the sand be soft, the 
 marks of the dew-claws, rudiments of hoofs on the 
 second and hfth toes, reach the sand and leave 
 their imprint, a reminder of the ancestral four- 
 toed condition. 
 
 The tracks of fawns show that they commonly 
 run beside the doe but in a less sedate manner, 
 taking side trips and returning, and occasionally, 
 in the exuberance of their childish spirits, bound- 
 ing up into the air, perhaps sideways, and coming 
 down with all four feet near together. 
 
 The study of the tracks of these creatures is 
 interesting, even if one does not catch a sight of 
 the makers. One July day I noticed the fresh 
 tracks of a large stag near the lighthouse, and 
 picked them up again two miles or more down the 
 beach where the animal was trotting from the 
 dunes towards the water. It was then nine 
 o'clock in the morning and dead low tide. The 
 tracks showed that the stag stopped at about six 
 o'clock at the edge of the half ebbed tide. Turn- 
 ing about he forded a little inlet, dry at low tide, 
 but at six o'clock full of water as shown by the 
 absence of tracks in its bed, and by the splash 
 
44 BEACH GRASS 
 
 and drop marks on the sand where he stepped 
 out on the beach. I followed his tracks, which 
 were as clear-cut as if in clay, in the damp sand, 
 but merely shallow cup-shaped depressions 
 without form in the hot dry sand. Instead of 
 going inland he had skirted the edge of the dunes 
 at the beach for nearly a mile, only once going 
 back a few rods into the dunes. Passing the 
 high peak of Eagle Dune, he turned abruptly 
 down towards the water, and, at about half tide, 
 his tracks disappeared in the wash of the waves. 
 I searched farther down the beach for his re- 
 turn tracks but, seeing none, I retraced my steps 
 and found he must have walked back about fifty 
 yards up the beach in the water, and had then 
 trotted straight away from the beach, over the 
 side of Eagle Dune and into the bogs and 
 thickets of the interior. He had probably got 
 the wind of some campers farther down the 
 beach. 
 
 Doubtless many times deer are passed unseen 
 in bushy cranberry bogs. These afford good 
 cover for restful days after nights of wandering, 
 of play and of feeding. One June day I fol- 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 45 
 
 lowed the tracks of a moderate-sized deer in the 
 dunes. It is a pleasant and harmless way to 
 hunt deer and good sport. Over sand hills and 
 through hollows they led me. The deer had ajv 
 peared especially to enjoy splashing through 
 pools of water. At last I started a doe from a 
 clump of bushes in a cranberry bog, she threw 
 up her white tail-flag and bounded off. Stop- 
 ping on the side of a dune, a picture of ex- 
 ceeding beauty in a setting of glistening sand, 
 she watched me calmlyand unafraid, for she had 
 lowered her flag. Suddenly her flag went up 
 and away she sped. The white tail-flag is a sure 
 indication of fear. In this case the sound of my 
 approach may have frightened the doe. Later 
 she paused to look at me, and, with her imper- 
 fect sight, did not recognize her arch-enemy 
 man. A passing breeze brought the scent and 
 she at once displayed her warning. If any 
 other deer saw it they would have understood 
 and flashed the same signal. Further observa- 
 tion and thought on this subject had more fully 
 confirmed the views previously expressed that the 
 white flag is a danger signal, and that it al- 
 
46 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ways advertises and never conceals its owner. 
 
 On a February day, with wind in my favor, 
 I watched a couple of deer trotting together 
 through the dunes towards the beach. Looking 
 over the last wave of sand towards the beach, 
 they were evidently alarmed, perhaps by a 
 fancied or real scent from a human being, to me 
 invisible, threw up their flags, turned inland but 
 changing their minds, trotted in my direction 
 just inside the beach. I ran down to head them 
 off but they passed me within eighty yards, 
 bounding prettily over the beach grass. One of 
 their leaps measured twelve feet. 
 
 Such lovely pictures of wild life remain long 
 in the memory. A few more are worth mention- 
 ing. One afternoon in mid-summer while sail- 
 ing at high tide down the Castleneck estuary we 
 saw a beautiful doe, very red and large, walking 
 slowly along the edge of the water by the Ven- 
 dome dune. Soon she turned inland and dis- 
 appeared beyond the dune. We landed and 
 crept to the top of the ridge and looked over. 
 There she stood, not over seventy yards away 
 on the white expanse of sand with her tail to- 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 47 
 
 wards us and her head turned to look at us — a 
 beautiful sight. She then trotted and bounded 
 off but her tail was down; she was not frightened; 
 she did not have our wind and she had not really 
 seen us, — or did she recognize us as friends'? 
 
 I discovered another doe on a September day, 
 wandering about the marsh near the dunes to 
 the windward of me and about three hundred 
 yards away. She occasionally fed in the grass 
 but kept looking up, once directly at me. From 
 time to time she shook her tail nervously but 
 never spread the alarm. Gracefully jumping a 
 creek she startled a pheasant and watched it 
 flying away. At last she disappeared in the 
 thickets of the dunes. 
 
 On a bright October day a doe emerged from a 
 dune bog and stood within fifty yards of me to 
 windward. As she slowly trotted off, two fawns 
 followed her, walking most charmingly side by 
 side. I said twins, but immediately afterwards 
 appeared a third fawn. Could they have been 
 triplets or were they merely friends, the children 
 of two or three parents'? 
 
 On a winter's day in a sunny nook of a pine 
 
48 BEACH GRASS 
 
 thicket in the dunes I was listening to the 
 sizzling of bacon in my frying-pan. Suddenly 
 I was aroused from my pleasant anticipations by 
 the sound of crashing among the bushes, and, 
 looking up, I saw the white tails of two deer 
 vanishing in the gloom of the timber. Whether 
 I saw the forms of the deer themselves or merely 
 imagined I did, can not be set down here with 
 certitude, but I doubt very much if I should 
 have seen the deer at all, had it not been for their 
 conspicuous alarm signals. 
 
 On a cold February day I followed the tracks 
 of a deer that ascended the narrow ridge of a 
 dune. The other side of the dune went down 
 steeply and was covered with glare ice, except in 
 one place where hard snow gave my snowshoes 
 a foot-hold. The deer, however, had kept on his 
 course and had descended over the ice. There 
 were deep and long furrows in the snows at the 
 foot of the slide, scratches on the ice and an 
 abundance of rubbed-off deer's hairs. It was 
 plain he had fallen and slid on his side. Deer 
 are not so very wise after all, I reflected; they 
 are very human. 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 49 
 
 Foxes continue to be common in the Ipswich 
 dunes and furnish food for thought in their 
 tracks and actions. Their clean-cut footmarks 
 with the two long pointed toes extending out in 
 front are generally characteristic. In soft sand, 
 however, where the imprint is not clearly 
 marked, this feature is often lost and the print 
 appears as round as that of an ordinary dog. In 
 deep sand rarely, more often in deep snow, the fox 
 occasionally leaves a mark made by the slight 
 dragging of a foot. This mark is not made by 
 the tail, which, as far as my observation goes, is 
 always held tidily above the surface of the 
 ground. His beautiful brush would be sadly 
 worn if he allowed it to drag in the sand. 
 
 With two of the habits of the fox, not before 
 referred to by me, I have become familiar in the 
 last few years. One of these is their habit of dig- 
 ging for water. The water level in the dunes 
 varies. In wet years all the deeper depression 
 ponds, and the water is stained brown from vege- 
 tation. In the depressions free from vegetation 
 the water is clear and green. As the spring and 
 summer advances the level of the water sinks, and 
 
50 BEACH GRASS 
 
 successive terraces of small rushes or other vegeta- 
 tion mark the receding shore line. In dry 
 seasons there is no water to be found in the dunes, 
 but one needs to dig but a few inches in these 
 hollows, and clean, sweet water seeps into the 
 pit. The fox has also learned this trick and it is 
 not uncommon to find small water-holes, dug by 
 foxes as shown by their scratch-marks and tracks. 
 These water-holes are taken advantage of by 
 other creatures and deer tracks and crow tracks 
 are often found near them. 
 
 Another habit of the fox in the dunes is 
 digging for grubs and cutworms at the roots of 
 the grass. While the skunk makes a shallow, 
 roundish hole, the fox is likely to make a deeper, 
 narrow hole. I have seen a number of these 
 holes together and plenty of fox tracks, showing 
 clearly their origin. The habit does not seem 
 to be as common as with the skunk that pits the 
 dunes for this purpose much more extensively. 
 
 All is game to the fox as my studies of the 
 droppings previously related showed. One Febru- 
 ary day I noticed many fox tracks near a curl- 
 ing snow drift, a drop of blood, a tuft of rabbit's 
 
FOX TRACKS AND RIPPLE-MARKS 
 
 FOX DIGGINGS lOR GRUBS 
 

 W4^.h 
 
 
 
 DEAD LOON WITH TRACKS OF CROW, SKUNK AND FOX 
 
 CATERPILLAR TRACKS ON STEEP SIDE OF DUNE 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 51 
 
 fur and part of the entrails of that animal. A 
 fox caught in a muskrat runway had his stomac h 
 full of muskrat fur. On one occasion I was fol- 
 lowing the tracks of a white-footed mouse. 
 These were joined by those of a fox. There 
 were some irregular jumps on the part of the 
 fox and the mouse tracks vanished. Again I 
 found the body of a herring gull on the beach 
 with head torn off and much of the flesh gone. 
 It was surrounded by tracks of both fox and crow, 
 but I venture to affirm that these two were not 
 companions at the feast. 
 
 A dead creature on the beach always attracts 
 the scavengers. A big loon thrown up at the top 
 of the tide was surrounded by tracks in which 
 those of crow, fox and skunk could easily be rec- 
 ognized. The skunk had ambled up in the night 
 from low water and was making for the dunes 
 twenty feet to leeward of the loon; suddenly he 
 stopped, "skidding" a little, turned at right angles 
 and trotted directly to the loon. The loon was re- 
 centy dead, a wounded bird, no doubt, that had 
 escaped the clutches of the gunner. It showed 
 no mark of tooth or claw, but had been inspected 
 
52 BEACH GRASS 
 
 only, and left until it was more tender eating. 
 The fox had kicked up sand over it and there 
 was the mark of his foot in the sand on the loon's 
 back. 
 
 As one follows fox tracks through the dunes 
 one can sometimes notice the strong foxy odor 
 resembling closely that of a skunk. It is not a 
 pleasant odor, but, in recognizing it, one feels a 
 primitive sort of satisfaction in the keenness of his 
 perceptions. On a still cold day in the woods 
 of Castle Hill I smelt the foxy odor very plainly, 
 and noticed the fresh tracks of a fox in the light 
 dry snow. It was a perfect day for tracking 
 and I set out to follow. The chase led me up 
 and down hill, through woods and thickets and 
 open fields in the course of which I learned sev- 
 eral things. The tracks were clear-cut and slen- 
 der, pointed in front and showing the knob of a 
 hind toe behind. The back feet were so exactly 
 placed in the marks of the forefeet that the 
 prints appeared to be of only one foot. There was 
 no dragging nor scuffing. The signs at stumps on 
 one side or the other of the trail showed that it 
 was a male or dog fox that I was following. At 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 53 
 
 these places the foxy odor was particularly strong. 
 
 His course was generally direct but he had 
 turned aside to investigate every hole. He had 
 examined both ends of a small culvert under- 
 neath the wood-road and he had paused to drink 
 at a brook. Arrived at a wire fence for sheep 
 he had, without hesitation and very deftly, 
 jumped through one of the small square openings 
 between the wires. On emerging from the en- 
 closure he had run up over the hill to the tracks 
 of another fox. In these he stepped so carefully 
 that the tracks appeared to be those of only one 
 fox. After thirty yards of this Indian file, the 
 tracks separated, one going to the left, the other 
 to the right. I followed the latter, and from in- 
 dications that were found later, it is evident that 
 I had unwittingly abandoned the chase of the 
 dog fox and was on the trail of a female fox or 
 vixen. 
 
 The lady soon turned aside and scratched 
 away the snow and pine needles at the foot of a 
 tree, and, if one were to judge from the feathers, 
 she had discovered a crow and a dead one, tor 
 there were no crow tracks near. Immediately 
 
54 BEACH GRASS 
 
 on leaving this find, the tracks showed a groove 
 at intervals on the left side, as if the booty had 
 dragged at times in the snow. Turning aside 
 from the path, she had started up the hill in the 
 open field. A disturbed place in the snow, nu- 
 merous and irregular marks of foxes' feet and a 
 multitude of crow's feathers scattered about, 
 suggested that the fox had laid down the crow, 
 and had partially or wholly devoured it. As 
 there seemed to be something under the snow at 
 this point, I dug down, and there in a smooth 
 cup-shaped depression was — not the remains of 
 a crow as I had expected — but the half of a 
 freshly killed cottontail rabbit. The head and 
 foreshoulders were gone, but the skin was as 
 neatly rounded over the stump of the body, and 
 the fur was as smooth as if an expert furrier had 
 sewed up the gaping wound. 
 
 After carefully covering up the half rabbit, 
 the fox had trotted a few yards further, climbed 
 a boulder in the field and sat down to survey her 
 cache. From the rock she had jumped three or 
 four feet to the ground, ambled across the field 
 and entered the woods. There were now no 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND SS 
 
 side marks to distinguish her tracks which were 
 soon lost in the maze of others among the trees. 
 That the fox himself depends on his nose much 
 more than on his eyes, I have often demonstrated 
 but never so clearly as on a midwinter day when, 
 walking along the beach at low tide, I made 
 out a fox half a mile ahead of me, ambling about 
 on the upper beach. Once he layed down in the 
 sand and bit at his back as a dog does when 
 hunting fleas. Soon he ran over the hard wet 
 beach to the edge of the water, scanning every 
 bit of seaweed or driftwood on his way. The 
 wind was blowing from the sea to the dunes so 
 that it would have been impossible to stalk him 
 from the dunes. I therefore decided to test his 
 eyesight and walked straight towards him along 
 the beach where he would not get my wind. I 
 was in plain sight, but, although he apparently 
 looked at me as I approached, it was not until I 
 was within a hundred yards of him that he sprang 
 forward, ran up the beach like the wind and dis- 
 appeared in the dunes. No tracks were to be 
 seen on the hard surface of the sand until his 
 initial spring. 
 
* S6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 It may be said that this fox really saw me 
 and was playing with me as foxes sometimes do, 
 and thus allowed me to approach as I did. I 
 hardly think this was the case, for, until the 
 final spring and straightaway run, he showed no 
 evidence of realizing what I was, and did not 
 run along the beach ahead of me as would 
 have been the case if he were trying to decoy me 
 on in play. 
 
 The beach is a good feeding ground for the 
 fox, but his visits to this region at low tide — 
 broad as it is and lacking in any shelter — are gen- 
 erally made at night and are unseen in the dark- 
 ness. If the tide is low in the night the tracks 
 of foxes coming up from the beach are common 
 the next morning. At ten o'clock one November 
 morning, when the tide had been low at three 
 and was then an hour in ebb, I came upon the 
 tracks of four foxes that had trotted down from 
 the dunes and were lost in the narrow strip of 
 beach swept clean by the tide. Three of these 
 had trotted down together, the fourth, some fifty 
 yards further off. All four foxes returned to the 
 dunes two or three hundred yards down the beach, 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 57 
 
 two of them side by side. It was probably a 
 family party, and the young were full grown, 
 as all the tracks were about the same size. 
 
 I once had an opportunity to measure the 
 speed of a fox. As I was motoring along the 
 road one evening at Ipswich, with searchlights 
 burning, a splendid red fox bounded ahead of 
 the automobile, his white tail-tip glistening like 
 a target. He was evidently confused by the 
 lights and darted first to one side and then to 
 the other side of the road, but finally, after a run 
 of about two hundred yards, he turned in to the 
 bushes on the left. In following the chase I had 
 speeded up to thirty miles an hour, but did not 
 gain on him. I have found, by measuring the 
 tracks of another bounding fox, that his feet 
 spread out in a line to a distance of three feet, 
 and that the distance between the jumps was 
 five to seven feet. 
 
 On a June day I came across a fox's track in 
 the dunes with a deep groove running along close 
 beside it. I followed it for two or three hundred 
 yards till it entered a thicket of poplars not 
 more than thirty or forty yards in circumfer- 
 
58 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ence in a deep hollow. Before tracing the tracks 
 and groove into the thicket I convinced myself 
 that the groove did not emerge, although there 
 were plenty of out-going fox tracks. On enter- 
 ing the thicket I found a freshly killed night 
 heron, much mangled. The entrails and breast 
 had been eaten. Holding the heron by the body 
 and carrying it five and six inches from the sand, 
 I discovered that its heavy bill made a groove 
 exactly like the one I had been following. 
 
 The cause of the groove accompanying the 
 fox tracks was evident, but it seemed worth 
 while to discover all I could about this matter. 
 Retracing my steps and the steps of the fox, I 
 finally lost them in the middle of the grove of 
 pitch pines, the seat of the great night heronry. 
 In all, the heron had been carried forty-two 
 hundred paces or fully three quarters of a mile. 
 Now the heron showed by its plumage that it 
 was an immature bird, hatched the year before. 
 It perhaps did not have the cunning of the adults 
 nor their advantageous position in the rookery 
 and it may have been roosting on the ground and 
 was sprung upon and killed by the fox. 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 59 
 
 Another very interesting fact developed. I 
 noticed that there were the tracks of two foxes, 
 one a little larger than the other, associated with 
 the groove. As the tracks came out of the 
 heronry on to the clear sand, it was the larger 
 fox that was carrying the bird, while the smaller 
 tracks ran first on one side then on the other. 
 After about a hundred yards of this, the smaller 
 fox took up the burden and carried it the rest of 
 the way, although the larger fox ran along beside, 
 generally very near but occasionally running a 
 little wide. If we assume that the larger fox 
 was the male or dog fox and the smaller one the 
 female or vixen, then the male must have made 
 the killing and, in true savage fashion, 
 have given the booty to his squaw to carry 
 home. 
 
 It was very easy to follow the tracks with the 
 groove, for although they went nearly directly 
 towards their goal, they avoided all bushy and 
 grassy places, and the groove was plainly visible 
 on the sand. It would have been difficult to 
 carry the body of a heron through bushes or even 
 through grass. At one place the body had been 
 
6o BEACH GRASS 
 
 dropped on the sand and taken up again in such 
 a way that the groove, which had been on the 
 right side, was now on the left. Within a hun- 
 dred yards of the hollow in which I found the 
 heron, there were numerous tracks of young foxes 
 some of which had come to meet the old ones, 
 and followed them back to the hollow. At the 
 verge of the hollow the heron had been placed 
 on the sand before it was taken into the clump 
 of trees. 
 
 The whole story was as clear as if I had been 
 present at the parents' return from the chase with 
 the welcome booty, although I did not see hide or 
 hair of this fox family. It was probable that 
 their hole or earth was near by, but I failed to find 
 it. Two young foxes were seen in the dunes a 
 few weeks later by several of my family who had 
 slept on the top of a dune. They awoke in the 
 early morning to see these little creatures rolling 
 over in play within a few yards of them. 
 Suddenly the foxes perceived the human 
 beings, and, with hair on end, they stamped 
 their little feet and barked savagely at the in- 
 truders. 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 61 
 
 On one occasion, I am inclined to think, I saved 
 a pheasant from death by a fox. I was walking on 
 snowshoes just below the brow of Castle Hill 
 when I heard a sharp croak — it was almost a 
 shriek and expressive of great fear — and a hen 
 pheasant flew out of a low, bushy thicket di- 
 rectly towards me. Immediately afterwards a fox 
 ran out of the other side and disappeared over 
 the hill. My explanation of the episode is this : 
 the pheasant was feeding or dozing in the thicket, 
 unmindful of a fox who was creeping to spring at 
 her. The noise of my snowshoes aroused her and, 
 looking up, she caught sight of the fox almost 
 upon her. With a shriek she made off away 
 from the fox, disregarding any other danger. 
 Thus it happened that the pheasant flew towards 
 me, and the fox, debarred of his prize, departed 
 in the other direction. I imagined he looked 
 very disgruntled and that he had the air of one 
 swearing inwardly. 
 
 Muskrat tracks, easily distinguished by the 
 central groove made by the tail and by the webbed 
 footprints, may occasionally be seen in the dry 
 sand, when the wanderlust seizes these amphibi- 
 
62 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ous creatures and they travel from one bog to an- 
 other. I have found their spectacular and deco- 
 rative tracks even on the edge of the sea, an un- 
 desirable pond of muskrats. 
 
 Woodchuck tracks are not often seen in the 
 dunes. The animal prefers to dig his hole in 
 stiff glacial gravel and not in soft, shift- 
 ing sand. The best tracks of his I ever saw in 
 the dunes were in wet sand in a dune hollow — 
 each claw, each wrinkle on the sole of the foot 
 was distinct — but alas I I had no photographic 
 film left with which to secure it. In walking lei- 
 surely the footprints of a woodchuck are near 
 together and the toes are frequently dragged. 
 When in a hurry the animal jumps like a rabbit, 
 although less actively, and the tracks are in fours, 
 the larger hind feet side by side in advance, the 
 ismaller ones back of these and one foot diago- 
 nally behind the other. Not only are the front 
 feet smaller than the hind feet, but they show the 
 marks of only four toes, while the larger back 
 feet have five toes. One of these large tracks 
 I measured was two and a half inches long and 
 one and a half inches broad. The distance be- 
 

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TRACKS IN THE SAND 63 
 
 tween the jumps I found in one case to be two 
 feet, four inches. 
 
 Woodchucks hibernate in their holes during the 
 winter, and are more consistent about it than 
 skunks whose tracks are often to be seen in the 
 snow on mild winter days. The only time I ever 
 saw a woodchuck walking on snow was on March 
 14, 1920. There was still much snow on the 
 ground and great icy drifts after a hard winter. 
 On this day I saw a large woodchuck running 
 over the snow near my house. He hid in some 
 bushes but, on my approach, ran on the snow to 
 the middle of the garden, sat still a moment on 
 the drift and then disappeared into it. A round 
 tunnel in the icy snow thirteen inches deep was 
 continued in his hole in the frozen ground. How 
 did he know, sealed up as he was, that it was 
 time to bore through the icy snow and come out? 
 
 The mild winter of 1920, 1921 was a favor- 
 able one to test the saying that if the woodchuck 
 or ground hog comes out of his hole on Candlemas 
 Day — February 2 — and sees his shadow he goes 
 back to his hole to escape the six weeks of cold 
 and storms to follow — 
 
64 BEACH GRASS 
 
 "// Candlemas day he dry and fair^ 
 The half o' winter s to come and mair; 
 If Candlemas day be wet and foul^ 
 The half o' winter's gane at Yule.'' 
 
 Four days after Candlemas, which had been 
 mild and pleasant, I was at Ipswich and dis- 
 covered in a smooth patch of sand on Wigwam 
 Hill the tracks of a woodchuck shown in the 
 photograph. He had undoubtedly seen his 
 shadow for the tracks were subsequent to a 
 shower that had occurred in the morning just be- 
 fore the sun shone. The haste of his progress — 
 rabbit fashion — suggested that he was anxious 
 to return to his hole for six weeks more sleep. 
 
 The same day the weather grew colder and the 
 following day it snowed, and it snowed occasion- 
 ally afterwards, but on the whole, during the next 
 six weeks, the weather was very mild and there 
 were many days when the ground hog could ven- 
 ture abroad in comfort, if he were not bound to 
 abide by the prophesy of his shadow at the Can- 
 dlemas season. March 6 was an exceptionally 
 mild day, the glass reaching 60°, and the fresh 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 65 
 
 tracks of the ground hog were plainly to be seen. 
 Here then was full proof that the ground hog 
 and his shadow are not to be relied on! Thus 
 are our cherished beliefs overthrown, our idols 
 shattered I 
 
 Tracks of cottontail rabbits are also uncommon 
 in the dunes, but they are all too common in the 
 snow in pastures and orchards of the upland. 
 They are easily distinguished from those of other 
 animals. The rabbit hops along and lands on his 
 soft feet so disposed that the powerful hind 
 ones are in front and the smaller fore paws 
 between his thighs behind. The marks of the 
 hind feet are side by side in front, those of the 
 forefeet are in a line one behind the other. This 
 pattern always distinguishes the tracks of a cot- 
 tontail from those of a grey squirrel for in the 
 latter case the forefeet like the hind feet are in 
 pairs side by side. Besides this, in the case of 
 the squirrel, the tracks often begin or end at a 
 tree trunk. Rabbits do not climb trees. 
 
 Like the deer, the cottontail flashes his white 
 tail in fear. They are timid creatures and are 
 always attacked with panic at the sight of man. 
 
66 BEACH GRASS 
 
 When at ease the tail is down, the white patch 
 does not show. A rabbit on a cart path two hun- 
 dred yards away trotted about at ease, although 
 he apparently looked at me at times, but I doubt 
 if he saw me for his tail was down. Later I came 
 upon him suddenly, the tail went up and all the 
 white hairs there and on his stern seemed to stand 
 on end as in the case of the deer, and flashed out 
 a most prominent signal. 
 
 It was maintained by the late Abbott Thayer 
 that this white signal, instead of advertising 
 served to obliterate the rabbit by matching the 
 white sky, as seen by the pursuing animal with 
 his eyes close to the ground. One April day, as I 
 was lying on the ground in an orchard, I heard 
 the yapping of some dogs, and a rabbit ran across 
 the field within fifty yards, prominent by reason of 
 his white tail. I could not for a moment imagine 
 this to be obliterative, although I had a dog's view 
 of him. A minute later two terriers came along, 
 following the trail by nose as is their wont and 
 not by eye. There have been other occasions 
 when the tail of the rabbit has been at the height 
 of my eye, as on a side hill, but never did it ap- 
 
RABBIT TRACKS 
 
 GRAY SQUIRREL TRACKS 
 
DEAD WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE AND TRACKS 
 
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 SEASIDE GOLDENROD AND SKUNK TRACKS 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 67 
 
 pear in the least obliterative. The cottontail 
 often depends on his concealingly colored coat 
 to escape detection, and we may pass him within 
 a few feet and fail to see his motionless body 
 among the dry leaves. The northern varying 
 hare has no rear white signal and when he lopes 
 off, he looks, to one used to a cottontail, like a 
 cowed animal with tail between the legs. 
 
 At the lower end of the sand dunes one may 
 find the tracks of that world-wide traveler and 
 pest of mankind, the Norway rat. I have no 
 doubt he voyaged to these shores on sand schoon- 
 ers and left by the convenient gangway. His 
 tracks are in form like a squirrel and his naked feet 
 make clean marks and show well the details. His 
 naked tail grooves the sand at times. His canny 
 nature was well shown one night when I had set 
 traps for small native mice and had laid paths of 
 cornmeal along the sand. The next morning 
 showed the tracks of rats all about, but never 
 nearer than eight or ten inches from the traps. 
 A week later I visited the same locality and no rat 
 tracks were to be found. They had deserted the 
 dangerous region. 
 
68 BEACH GRASS 
 
 The white-footed mouse also makes tracks like 
 a rabbit and he is apt to have runways or paths 
 where many tracks are to be seen. In going up a 
 slope, the tracks become linear, two together in 
 each print, as if the pretty little creature were 
 trotting. One midwinter day I noticed many 
 tracks about an old ship's timber in the dunes. 
 Beneath it was a nest of dry grass, the size of two 
 fists, from which peeped a very sleepy, white- 
 footed mouse. 
 
 Tracks of the jumping-mouse are similar but 
 smaller, and often show the tail, switched some- 
 times to one side and sometimes to the other. I 
 measured the tracks of one that had galloped at 
 speed across the sand and made jumps at seven- 
 teen or eighteen inches, and one at nineteen 
 inches. 
 
 Fortunately for the nesting birds, cats are 
 rarely found in the dunes. One is generally kept 
 at the lighthouse, and she has been so obliging as 
 to make tracks in damp sand for me to photo- 
 graph. About the size of a skunk's tracks, they 
 are easily distinguished from those of any other 
 animal to be met with in these regions by the ab- 
 
CAT TRACKS 
 
 SKUNK TRACKS AND HOLE DUG FOR GRUIiS 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 69 
 
 sence of claw marks. The pads show distinctly, 
 but the feline race keeps the claws concealed in 
 sheathes until they are needed for execution. 
 
 After a rain, the sand may be so hard packed 
 that the tracks of lighter animals or birds do 
 not show or show only at intervals, so that their 
 interpretation becomes difficult. I have seen the 
 characteristic tracks of a skunk arranged in close 
 linear fashion as he ambled slowly along, or in 
 diagonal lines of fours, as he quickened his pace, 
 change to a single foot mark every two or three 
 feet where the sand was so hard that it only oc- 
 casionally showed an impression. Such a sand 
 surface is well pitted by the rain, a condition 
 shown in several photographs. 
 
 On the beach sand, hard-packed by the waves, 
 this state of things is not uncommon and a fox 
 may trot along and leave no trace on the hard 
 surface until he springs away in haste. The 
 tracks of sanderlings are often invisible, but their 
 recent presence is plainly shown by the series of 
 curving lines of probings, which are sometimes 
 nearly continuous furrows. A flock of plovers 
 may leave nothing to mark their presence on the 
 
70 BEACH GRASS 
 
 hard beach but their occasional dabs or probings, 
 irregularly scattered in the sand. Sandpipers 
 keep their heads down and probe the sand system- 
 atically; plovers run about with their heads up 
 and dab here and there. Yellow-legs in the 
 marsh keep their heads up and dab like plovers. 
 In the case of the black-bellied plover, these dabs 
 often show a partly opened bill. 
 
 I have found the tracks of seals on Ipswich bar, 
 — great grooves and depressions and flipper- 
 marks. The seal still flourishes here, and as re- 
 cently as December, 1919, I counted on the bar 
 seventy-flve of these great animals taking their 
 siestas. It is always a delight to watch these 
 wild creatures, and their presence and numbers 
 when pointed out to the stranger is always the oc- 
 casion for surprise. Thoreau in his "Cape Cod" 
 says : "The Boston papers had never told me that 
 there were seals in the harbor. I had always as- 
 sociated these with the Esquimaux and other out- 
 landish people. Yet from the parlor windows 
 all along the coast you may see families of them 
 sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me 
 as mermen would be." 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 71 
 
 On June 11, 1922, twelve years to the day 
 after my delightful but remote observation of the 
 new-born seal and its mother on a bar off Ipswich 
 beach, related in "Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes," 
 I found a young seal basking in the sun 
 twenty feet above the tide on the beach itself. 
 We saw each other about the same time, but, by 
 quick action on my part, I was able to head him 
 off from the water, and had, for the first time, a 
 chance to study this interesting animal in a wild 
 state at close range. 
 
 He was a beautiful little creature, sleek and 
 velvety, handsomely marked in black and grey, 
 and ''speckled like a macreil" as were the mer- 
 maids of the ancient arctic explorers. His eyes 
 were large and lustrous, and he "looked ear- 
 nestly" on me. Young as he was, his full upper 
 lip carried a more than man-sized moustache of 
 long, stout and curving bristles. He was thirty 
 inches long and may have weighed twenty pounds. 
 He growled gently when barred from the water, 
 but made no attempt to bite, and allowed himself 
 to be stroked. 
 
 When I stood aside he made straight for the 
 
72 BEACH GRASS 
 
 water, arching his back as he lifted himself up on 
 his front flippers which were bent so that his claws 
 dug deep in the sand as he dragged his body 
 along. His hind flippers were as useless for pro- 
 gression as was his short tail. This three-in-one 
 part of his anatomy swayed gently from side to 
 side with his efforts at walking on his hands. 
 The record of a leisurely walk from the water 
 was shown by little flipper-marks in the sand 
 that were only three inches apart, but in his 
 hasty return his front steps, so to speak, were 
 ten inches apart. A marvelous change came 
 over the method of his departure when he 
 entered the water of an incoming wave. The 
 awkward caterpillar humping ceased, and the 
 back flippers came into action so that the body 
 was driven forward with great speed as by a 
 screw propeller, and the seal at once disappeared 
 under the surface. Later his small dark head 
 bobbed up, but at once plunged like an expert 
 swimmer's under a curling wave that was about 
 to overwhelm him. 
 
 It was a most interesting experience but I have 
 two regrets. I pray for another opportunity to 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 73 
 
 wipe these out, and I trust I may not be obliged to 
 wait for the passage of another twelve years. 
 The first regret is that I did not observe whether 
 the seal used or did not use his front flippers in 
 swimming, when his back ones came into such 
 powerful play, and the second regret is that, alas I 
 I had left my camera at home. 
 
 Bird tracks in the dunes are most abundant in 
 fall and winter when great flocks of snow bunt- 
 ings and horned larks spread their traceries over 
 the sand. The horned lark always walks or runs 
 and takes long strides, while the snow bunting 
 takes shorter steps and may sometimes hop. The 
 horned lark picks at the pointed stalks of 
 grass from the sand while the snow bunting fre- 
 quently perches on them. In both, as in the case 
 of the Lapland longspur, the mark made by the 
 hind toe and claw is long and well incised. 
 
 The tracks of a flock of swallows that has 
 rested on a dune top during the fall migrations 
 are puzzling to the uninitiated. The birds do 
 not wander far, as their short legs and long 
 wings interfere with much pedestrian exercise. 
 In fact, their method of locomotion on the ground 
 
74 BEACH GRASS 
 
 is largely by flutterings, a combined action of 
 wings and feet, although they occasionally walk 
 a few inches without the help of their wings. 
 The feet are held well apart as they shuffle along. 
 As the flocks are made up chiefly of tree swallows, 
 the droppings on the sand generally contain a 
 few bayberry seeds. The swallows often take 
 sun baths, opening and shutting their wings in 
 the early morning on the side of the dune, just 
 as do barn swallows on the sunny side of a 
 roof. 
 
 Although tracks of shore birds and gulls are 
 more common on the beach, flocks often settle in 
 the dunes and spread their tracks over the sand. 
 One may find in a short compass the tracks of 
 ring-necked plover and herring gull, of skunk and 
 fox, of crow and toad. 
 
 Savannah sparrow tracks are common at all 
 seasons but winter, while those of its cousin, the 
 Ipswich sparrow are most common in spring and 
 fall, and rare in winter. One would need to be 
 a keen diagnostician to distinguish between the 
 tracks of these two birds, but the Ipswich sparrow 
 is slightly larger and is more of a walker than the 
 

 -^:%^ 
 
 4-. 
 
 TRACKS OF A HORNED LARK AND OF A LAZY CROW 
 
 TRACKS OF CROW AND OF YOUNG TOADS 
 
n^^ 
 
 
 TRACKS OF RING-NECKED PLOVER, OF TOAD, AND OF CROW 
 ALIGHTING 
 
 -X 
 
 ■% 
 «? - 
 
 r 
 
 "^ 
 
 TRACKS OF NIGHT HERONS 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 75 
 
 Savannah and, unlike that bird, it very rarely 
 hops. 
 
 Crows' tracks are common at all seasons of the 
 year and always characteristic. The * 'gouty" 
 toe joints, the lazy habit of dragging one or more 
 toes, the very rare hop, have all been mentioned 
 in my previous publication. In alighting, the 
 feet come down together and the hind toe and 
 even the tarsus may cut the sand. In springing 
 away, the feet together sometimes sink in deeply. 
 In both acts the marks of the wing feathers are 
 often plainly imprinted on the sand. While 
 the adult crow rarely hops, the young do so fre- 
 quently. Hopping is probably the primitive 
 form of locomotion in arboreal birds that jump 
 or hop from limb to limb, while the art of walk- 
 ing is acquired later if the bird frequents the 
 ground. I have watched an adult crow and four 
 full grown young on the beach. The young fre- 
 quently called for food and whenever this was 
 found by the parent, the young, although gen- 
 erally walking, would, at these times, hurry to her 
 with long hops, aiding themselves by spreading 
 their wings. This spreading of the wings to 
 
76 BEACH GRASS 
 
 glide when a bird hops must have been the prim- 
 itive form of aviation in birds, just as it was the 
 primitive form in man. The early gliding ex- 
 periments of Lillienthal are historical. 
 
 Near the heronry, the footprints of multitudes 
 of night herons are in evidence, and rarely one 
 comes across the much larger prints of the great 
 blue heron. One of these birds, a sportive indi- 
 vidual, took three broad jumps with feet together 
 before taking flight. The tracks of this heron 
 are more commonly seen on the beach or in the 
 wet places in the dunes, but I retain the picture 
 in my mind of one of these great birds standing 
 like a Japanese bronze on a dune-top silhouetted 
 against the sunset. 
 
 Toad tracks are sometimes abundant in the 
 dunes, but their numbers are dependent on the 
 amount of water in the bogs in the tadpole sea- 
 son. In August and September one may find 
 multitudes of their curious tracks, most of them 
 of small individuals. Their usual gait is by 
 short jumps only two or three inches long or less, 
 but I have measured the jumps of larger toads 
 that were evidently in a hurry, and had cleared 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 77 
 
 eighteen and even twenty inches. They steer a 
 surprisingly straight course, often over the high- 
 est part of a dune wave. Where they hide 
 themselves by day is always a problem, as it is 
 the rarest thing to discover them in daylight. 
 Even then, they are difficult to see, as they as- 
 similate their color to the sand and are very grey 
 and sandy. They may be found under a log or 
 piece of a wreck, or buried in the sand. One may 
 find in the morning a disturbance in the smooth 
 surface of the sand and tracks of a toad leaving it. 
 The toad must have buried 'himself in the sand 
 in the early morning before, but his tracks lead- 
 ing up to his hiding place were effaced by the 
 wind of the day. That evening he made his 
 exit for his night wandering and pursuit of in- 
 sects, and his tracks of exit were still plainly to 
 be seen in the morning, before the sun had dried 
 the sand and the wind had blotted out the record. 
 Insects weave a delicate tracery over the sand. 
 The seaside locust or grasshopper, colored like 
 the sand so as to be almost invisible when at rest, 
 whirs a long distance away as one walks over 
 the dunes in summer. The multiple footprints 
 
78 BEACH GRASS 
 
 of his six feet, the groove made by his body and 
 the deep marks in the sand made by his powerful 
 hind feet as he hops away are all characteristic. 
 
 The tracks of caterpillars on the sand are cu- 
 rious and at times very striking features. They 
 are seen to best advantage when the surface of 
 the sand is pit-marked by rain, for the passage of 
 the caterpillar's body smoothes or planes the 
 surface and the track shows well by contrast. 
 A large woolly-bear caterpillar that I encountered 
 in the dunes one August day was making a 
 straight course with considerable speed over the 
 dry but rain-marked . sand. Its track was half 
 an inch wide and perfectly smooth, for his rough 
 hairs brushed off the irregularities in the sand 
 he traversed. At times a narrow central ridge 
 showed, made by the interval between his pairs 
 of false legs. Where he struggled up an incline, 
 cross lines appeared made by the digging in of his 
 vigorous true legs in front. When I attempted 
 to examine him and put him through his paces 
 on the sand, he curled up in a ball and played 
 possum. 
 
 It is evident that woolly-bear caterpillars de- 
 
TRACKS OF HERRING GUl.I. 
 
 GRASSHOPPER AND ITS TRACKS AND TRACKS OF SAVANNAH SPARROW 
 
TRACKS IN THE SAND 79 
 
 pend on their clicvaux-dc-frisc to protect thcni 
 from attack, but this does not always avail. 
 During the fall migrations at Ipswich I once 
 watched within a few feet a hermit thrush pick- 
 ing at a woolly-bear caterpillar on the ground. 
 I soon saw that the thrush's efforts were effec- 
 tively directed, for the hairs were fast disappear- 
 ing from the victim. At last a black, naked 
 worm, entirely devoid of the thick coat of hairs, 
 remained. The hermit thrush then picked his 
 victim up in his bill, swallowed it, flew to a low 
 branch, wagged his tail up and down in his 
 characteristic manner, chucked a few times with 
 satisfaction, and was off. 
 
 On the steep side of a dune a caterpillar had 
 made repeated efforts to ascend, but losing its 
 foothold in the loose sand had rolled down. Yet, 
 like Bruce's spider, it tried, tried, tried again. 
 The picture in the sand suggested the outline 
 of a jagged mountain range or a temperature 
 chart. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Beach in Winter 
 
 ''The wind blew east; we heard the roar 
 Of ocean on his wintry shored 
 
 — Emerson 
 
 THE winter of the great frost, so vividly 
 described in Lorna Doone was a memo- 
 rable one. The country people in the 
 Doone Valley, depressed by the snow and cold, 
 heard a hollow moaning sound which they at- 
 tributed to a witch "cursing all the country from 
 the caverns by the sea" and believed that the 
 snow would last until they could catch and down 
 her. "But the land being thoroughly blocked 
 with snow, and the inshore parts of the sea with 
 ice (floating in great fields along) Mother Will- 
 drum (if she it were) had the caverns all to her- 
 self, for there was no getting at her." 
 
 Severe winters are sure to recur either singly 
 
 or in a series and they are apt to shake the faith, 
 
 80 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 81 
 
 temporarily at least, of those who say the climate 
 is changing and is much milder than when they 
 were young. Then, according to these wise ones, 
 snow came regularly at Thanksgiving and there 
 was sleighing until the end of March. Meteoro- 
 logical records kept for many years show that 
 mild winters and severe winters occurred a gen- 
 eration ago as they do today, and that the snow- 
 fall has varied irregularly. The average snow- 
 fall in Boston for the winter is 44 inches, but in 
 the winter of 1873-4 it was more than twice 
 this, or 96.4 inches, a little over eight feet. Two 
 years later it was 5.3 inches, the least on record. 
 The winters of 1886-7, of 1903-4 and of 
 1919—20 were severe winters with a snowfall of 
 73 inches each year, while in 1888-9, 1900-1, 
 1908-9 and 1912-13 it was only 20 inches or 
 less. That the arrival of snow did not average 
 earlier a generation or more ago is shown by the 
 fact that the average amount of snowfall up to 
 December in twenty-one years from 1871 to 
 1892 was 1.8 inches, while in the twenty-two suc- 
 ceeding winters up to 1913, it was 1.9 inches. 
 In the same way if we delve into more ancient 
 
82 BEACH GRASS 
 
 records we find accounts of mild winters and 
 severe winters, but in the long run, the cold and 
 warm, the dry and wet balance each other, and 
 the general average is the same. Meteorolo- 
 gists believe that there has been no mate- 
 rial change in the climate within historical 
 times. 
 
 Yet it is a common idea that the climate of 
 New England is growing milder, and when we 
 have much cold and snow, the older people speak 
 of it as an ''old-fashioned winter." The human 
 mind is prone to remember vividly and even to 
 magnify unusual events and seasons, while or- 
 dinary seasons of snowfall are forgotten. Then, 
 too, a snowdrift three feet high, struggled 
 through by a child, assumes gigantic proportions 
 in the memory when the child has reached mature 
 age and size. 
 
 In our cities a generation ago, the snowfall 
 was not managed as efficiently as it is now, when 
 powerful snow ploughs and gangs of men clear 
 the streets within a few hours of the storm. In 
 former days the snow was allowed to accumulate 
 and remained longer in the way of traffic. An- 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 83 
 
 other cause for self-deception exists with those 
 who have spent their earlier years in inland towns 
 or country where the snowfall is greater and 
 comes earlier than it does in coastal regions. A 
 very few miles often makes a considerable differ- 
 ence. 
 
 The winters of 1903-4 of 1917-18 and 
 1919-20 were unusually severe and afforded many 
 interesting phenomena. That of 1917-18, oc- 
 curring during the Great War, will long be re- 
 membered. Captain Howard, the keeper of the 
 light in the Ipswich dunes, was startled at night 
 by loud boomings which shook the plates on his 
 pantry shelves. Visions of German raiders bomb- 
 ing the coast naturally came to his mind, but it 
 was discovered later that the disturbance arose 
 from great frost cracks forming in the sand of 
 the dunes and extending for many yards. In this 
 way miniature earthquakes are caused by the 
 frost. 
 
 The beach and the sea are of great interest in 
 severe winter weather. Those who know these 
 regions only in the summer have little idea of 
 the changes wrought by the cold. As the tide 
 
84 BEACH GRASS 
 
 falls, the beach becomes coated with ice of 
 fantastic design. Each receding wave is marked 
 by an arc of frozen foam. In continued cold 
 weather, the coating on the beach gradually 
 builds up, augmented by the icy slush and cakes 
 left by the ebbing tide. All is so solidly frozen 
 to the sand that it remains a bottom ice at flood 
 tide. A shelf of ice may extend a little way 
 out over the water forming, what is called in 
 arctic regions, an ice foot. 
 
 At times great cakes of ice break away from 
 their anchors and, buoyed up by the water, bring 
 up sand, pebbles, and boulders. After the 
 severe winter of 1917-18 the beach at Ipswich 
 to a distance of two miles below the pebbly and 
 boulder-strewn shore at the foot of Castle Hill, 
 was dotted in places with pebbles and boulders. 
 These must have been carried by the ground ice 
 with the falling tide and dropped later on the 
 sand. One unfamiliar with this winter phenom- 
 enon might be at a loss to explain the presence 
 of a boulder four feet long and about three feet 
 thick that I found on the smooth sand beach, 
 some two miles from the nearest boulder region 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 85 
 
 at the foot of Castle Hill. Two other boulders, 
 nearly as large, were to be found on the beach 
 in this two-mile stretch. How many disap- 
 peared in deep water can not be told. One is 
 apt to think that all boulders have been brought 
 to their present position by glaciers or icebergs 
 which are of glacial origin, but it is evident that 
 they must have sometimes been carried in the past, 
 as these examples show that they are in the pres- 
 ent, by ice not of glacial origin. 
 
 On the upper edge of the beach is to be found 
 in severe winters the most interesting and strik- 
 ing ice formation, the ice-wall. This is formed 
 partly of small ice cakes and slush ice left at 
 the top of the tide, and partly of snow. It is 
 solidified by the sea-water thrown up by the 
 waves, which, in freezing, cements together the 
 component parts, and builds up the wall higher 
 and higher as the spray and ice is thrown on top. 
 At times the soft slush ice, newly formed on the 
 surface of the ocean, is thrown on top of the wall 
 and fills the hollows with a snow-white mantle 
 which contrasts strongly with the old ice, often 
 dark with sand. This mantle, at first as soft as 
 
86 BEACH GRASS 
 
 snow, later becomes solidified into a hard frozen 
 mass by the percolating water. 
 
 The steep side of the ice-wall faces the sea, 
 while the land side slopes off gradually. In 
 storms, and at unusually high tides the sea 
 breaks over and forms a second or even a third 
 ice-wall higher up the beach, but the lower wall 
 is always the sharpest defined and most spectac- 
 ular. Its height varies from a foot or two to 
 ten or twelve feet, dependent on the length and 
 severity of the frost. Against this solid barrier, 
 the waves break at high tide as on a rocky shore, 
 and, as in the latter case, they carve turrets and 
 columns, overhanging shelves, chasms and grottos. 
 Many of the grottos in the ice-wall are extremely 
 beautiful, the walls irregularly honeycombed and 
 studded with crystals and knobs of ice, and the 
 roof hung with icicles. In places, pure white or 
 delicately green or blue, the ice is apt to become 
 soiled with sand thrown up by the waves. A 
 brief thaw may remove the icy coating which 
 holds the sand on the beach, and the waves soon 
 change the color of the ice-wall from white to 
 gray. The contrast between the sand beach. 
 
INCIPIENT ICE-WALL AT THE BEACH, JANUARY, I922 
 
 THE ICE- WALL AT THE BEACH, JANUARY 6, I918 
 
ICE-WALL UNDERCUT 
 
 ICE-WALL HONEYCOMBED AND DARKENED WITH SAND 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 87 
 
 smooth and as free from snow and ice as in mid- 
 summer, and the ice-wall at its upper edge makes 
 a surprising picture, but the wall is most beauti- 
 ful when the beach is sealed by an icy coating, 
 and the waves build up the wall undefiled by 
 sand. 
 
 On one memorable day in midwinter I was at 
 the beach alone and had taken off my snowshoes 
 in order to climb down the wall on to the beach. 
 I found the snowshoes, which are four feet long, 
 useful in the photographs I was taking to give 
 an idea of the height of the wall. Without 
 some measure of comparison, a photograph of a 
 wall a foot high may appear ten times that 
 height, and in the same way a wall of ten feet 
 may appear in a photograph to be onh' 
 a foot high. I have seen a photograph 
 taken of a small cake of floe-ice from 
 the distance of a few feet produce the im- 
 pression on the beholder of an iceberg half a 
 mile away. I was so busy photographing the 
 ice-wall that I had not noticed the rising tide 
 whose waves were almost stilled by their coating 
 of slob ice. With each throb of the sea the 
 
88 BEACH GRASS 
 
 water was creeping nearer to me over the icy 
 beach, but hidden from view under the soft slush 
 floating on top, and I suddenly found my 
 moccasined feet in the freezing mixture. The 
 ice-wall, smooth and undercut, was unclimable 
 except with ice axe and creepers, but a dash of a 
 hundred yards brought me to a broken place in 
 the wall where I easily ascended to safety. 
 
 At times the upper edge of the beach is covered 
 thick with flattened ovoids and spheres of ice 
 from a few inches to a foot or two in diameter. 
 Cobblestone ice is an appropriate name for this 
 formation, as it is brought about by the rubbing 
 together of ice cakes thrown around and rolled 
 up and down the beach by the surf. The process 
 is the same as in the much slower formation of 
 cobblestones out of broken fragments of rock. 
 On one occasion I found part of the sea-wall built 
 up of these round pebbles of ice, some small, 
 some large, all tightly cemented together with 
 frozen sea-spray. It was a perfect conglomer- 
 ate or puddingstone, similar in formation to the 
 conglomerate made of beach pebbles in former 
 ages. 
 
ICE-WALL, FEBRUARY 8, I92O 
 
 ICE-WALL, FEBRUARY 29, 1 920 
 
( 
 
 PUDDINGSTONE ICE-WALL 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 89 
 
 At the foot of the gravelly cliffs of Castle 
 Hill, where it has been cut away by the sea, the 
 beach is strewn with boulders. On these, in 
 severe weather, ice caps build up still higher until 
 the waves can reach no farther. The waves are 
 arrested at their highest point and turned into 
 pinnacles of ice. 
 
 The sea itself is wonderfully changed under 
 the influence of the intense cold. Long after 
 the small fresh water ponds are fast bound up 
 with ice, the sea keeps open. The restless waves 
 prevent freezing and the larger body of sea water 
 takes a long period of frost to cool it down to the 
 freezing point, which is 28° Fahrenheit, not 
 32° as is the case with fresh water. In- 
 stead of forming a thin skim of ice as in quiet 
 regions, the surface of the sea, churned by the 
 ceaseless throb of the waves, becomes milky and 
 suggests sago gruel. The surface ripples vanish, 
 as if quieted by oil, and the waves throb and 
 break with a muffled and sullen roar on the icy 
 beach. Their force is spent under the thick 
 covering of snowy ice. If one scoops up a hand- 
 ful of this he discovers that it is not formed of 
 
90 BEACH GRASS 
 
 rounded grains as he might imagine but of thin 
 flakes and crystals broken up into small pieces. 
 It is this icy mixture that is left by the receding 
 waves in snowy windrows on the beach, and that 
 serves to build up the ice-wall and fill its hol- 
 lows. One may unexpectedly sink up to the 
 hips in crevasses in the ice-wall filled with the 
 snowy white mass before it is congealed by the 
 cement of freezing water. 
 
 As the cold continues, the flakes freeze to- 
 gether on the water and form ice cakes of all sizes 
 from an inch to several feet and later many yards 
 in diameter, forming veritable floes. The con- 
 stant heave of the sea prevents, at first, the for- 
 mation of an extensive sheet, but these cakes, 
 rubbing against one another, take on a more or 
 less circular outline with elevated edges. This 
 is the well-known pancake ice of Scoresby and 
 other arctic explorers, — the lolly or slob ice of 
 the Labrador Coast. 
 
 On February 3, 1918, the ocean, as far as one 
 could see from the beach, was covered with pan- 
 cake ice with here and there a larger piece of solid 
 floe. On some of these, seals were lying, adding 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 91 
 
 to the arctic character of the scene. On one 
 piece of the floe were two seals and one splendid 
 great black-backed gull. Lanes of steel-blue water 
 intersected the snowy surface, and in these, red- 
 breasted mergansers sported, pushing the smaller 
 ice cakes out of their way as they swam. As 
 I was watching a flock of seventy-five of these 
 ducks, with their iridescent green heads and 
 coral red bills, all adult males, — for nearly all the 
 the brown-headed females and young winter in 
 the South, — they laboriously rose from the water, 
 leaving behind them an oblong patch of dark 
 water. There was no wind and the ground swell 
 was so nearly flattened by the ice that but tiny 
 waves broke on the beach. In bits of open water 
 close to shore one could see the ice coating of 
 the beach extending out, beautifully green as 
 seen through the clear sea water. 
 
 But perhaps the most interesting arctic phe- 
 nomenon of intensely cold weather at the sea- 
 shore is the mist that arises from the sea water 
 — the frost-rime of the older arctic explorers. 
 Captain William Scoresby in his ''Journal of a 
 voyage to the Northern Whale-Fishery" pub- 
 
92 BEACH GRASS 
 
 lished in 1823 defines frost-rime as "3. sort of fog 
 that appears on the surface of the sea, in severe 
 frosts, produced by the condensation of the vapor 
 arising from the water in consequence of its being 
 piuch warmer than the air." "The sea," he 
 says, ''on occasions of frost-rime is generally 
 about 20 degrees or 30 degrees warmer than the 
 air." He goes on to say, 'T was long in doubt 
 whether the freezing of the sprays and froth of 
 the waves, or the evaporation of the sea, was the 
 cause of the meteor. Having, however, taken a 
 large shallow vessel of water into the open air, 
 and placed it in a situation sheltered from the 
 wind, at a time when the frost-rime was particu- 
 larly dense, the thermometer being at zero, I ob- 
 served that this water, though perfectly still and 
 unruffled, soon began to discharge a thin vapor, 
 resembling the frost-rime, which it continued to 
 give out, until the surface was covered with ice. 
 This experiment convinced me that the cause 
 must be simply evaporation." 
 
 The sea looks like the scene of a terrible con- 
 flagration. Great smoke-like masses of dark 
 vapor boil up, and lashed by the icy wind, roll in 
 
ICE-WALL AND PINNACLED ROCKS 
 
 ICE-WALL BATTERED BY THE SURF AT HIc;H TIDE 
 
FROST-RIME AT THE BEACH 
 
 ICE GROTTO 
 
THE BEACH IN WINTER 93 
 
 on to the shore. Here and there spirts of white 
 vapor, resembling puffs of steam, rise up from 
 the water against the background of dark clouds, 
 spin around like water spouts and rapidly drift 
 down wind. As they gradually fade away, they 
 are often renewed by fresh bursts from below. 
 
 The frost-rime is densest in the night and in 
 the morning and evening hours when the cold is 
 most intense. At midday, under the rays of the 
 sun, except in below zero weather, the cloud 
 disappears. At night, the frost-rime looks from 
 a distance like a dark and sullen mountain range, 
 but it is snow-capped and beautiful to behold 
 when the tops of the range are touched by the 
 rays of the full moon. 
 
 As one watches from the shore the cloud blow 
 in over the land, it seems to dissipate into thin 
 air, but in reality it is transformed or congealed 
 into countless crystals that sparkle and glow on 
 every blade of dead grass, every dried spray of 
 goldenrod, every branch of brush. On the ice- 
 covered sand the crystals take advantage of 
 every knob and every roughness to begin their 
 growth. They are few and far between where 
 
94 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the surface of the ice is smooth, but they thickly 
 beset the rough ice. As they build up they form 
 rosettes, if the air is calm, shuttlecocks if there 
 be a wind. The apex of the shuttlecock points 
 down wind, the feathery crystals extending fan- 
 shaped towards it. These rosettes and shuttle- 
 cocks of feathery crystals of ice are of great 
 beauty and scintillate in the bright sunlight. 
 They are winter flowers, lovely in form and 
 coloration. The icicles hanging from the stranded 
 ice cakes and from the roofs of the grottos carved 
 in the sea-wall are furred around with these deli- 
 cate snowy crystals. The sea beach is interest- 
 ing and beautiful at all seasons, and not least 
 in winter. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Ice and Snow in the Sand Dunes 
 
 *'Come and see the north-wind's masonry^ 
 
 — Emerson 
 
 IT is very unusual for the dunes to be held 
 down by such an unbroken coating of snow 
 and ice, that the blowing of the sand ceases 
 and dune growth and change are stilled. 
 This state of affairs occurred, however, in 
 the winter of 1919-20. The earlier snow- 
 storms of the winter were heavy and wet; 
 the snow fell quietly, coating the sand 
 thickly and freezing into a solid sheet. Later 
 storms added to the accumulation and the dry 
 surface snow blew about and formed drifts that 
 were, for the most part, spotless white and free 
 from contamination with the darker sand which 
 was held prisoner below. Winter is generally 
 the season of greatest movement in the dunes, 
 
 95 
 
96 BEACH GRASS 
 
 for the winds are then the strongest and, as a 
 rule, the snow and sand blow about together, 
 forming gray drifts of mingled sand and snow. 
 In the northern blasts, the conical dunes smoke at 
 the top like wigwams, the cirque dunes are 
 rapidly undercut and build up to leeward and 
 the desert dunes deposit their load of snow and 
 sand on the steep southern side. Often the snow 
 and sand are segregated and form alternate 
 layers, wavy lines and concentric circles, alter- 
 nately gray and white, sometimes in patterns of 
 considerable beauty. 
 
 On the leeward side of a dune, the southern 
 side in winter, where the sweep from the north 
 is unobstructed by vegetation, masses of snow 
 sometimes accumulate and are buried in successive 
 layers of sand. One of these, which I called 
 glacier dune, I described in "Sand Dunes and 
 Salt Marshes" and told of finding snow there 
 throughout the month of May. One may easily 
 recognize these caches of snow as the spring comes 
 on by the dampness and therefore darkness of the 
 sand over them, but especially by the cracks in 
 the sand. As the snow m.elts below, the sand 
 
-^M: 
 
 ".K 
 
 DUNES IN WINTER 
 
 DUNES AFTER ICE-STORM 
 
SNOWDRIFT IN DUNES 
 
 STRATIFIED DRIFT OF SAND AND SNOW 
 
ICE AND SNOW IN THE DUNES 97 
 
 is kept moist and so compacted that in sinking to 
 take the place of the snow, the layer of sand 
 cracks. In walking over the dunes in cold 
 weather one may be startled by suddenly sinking 
 through an inch or two of sand up to one's waist 
 in clear snow. 
 
 The wind plays strange pranks with the sand 
 in winter. One formation, not uncommon, is 
 that of an icy slab supported on numerous short 
 columns of sand a few inches to a foot or more 
 high. These structures look at times like minia- 
 ture Grecian temples. Again there are columns 
 devoid of a roof and toadstool-like structures. ^ 
 The explanation of their formation is probably 
 as follows : snow in melting has frozen into a sur- 
 face coating of ice and has also percolated into 
 the sand in spots and frozen there. The cutting 
 wind has blown away the loose sand not cemented 
 by the ice and has rounded oif into small pillars 
 the harder combination of ice and sand. Oc- 
 casionally one will find a large mushroom-like 
 
 1 The similarity in formation of these miniature wind-carved 
 columns and those made by the sea waves in horizontal strata 
 of limestone is striking. Compare this illustration with the 
 one on page 60 of "A Labrador Spring." 
 
98 BEACH GRASS 
 
 structure with a covering thatch of grass and 
 weed stalks. This pale yellow covering has not 
 attracted the sun's rays but has protected the 
 underlying ice-infiltrated sand, while the sun 
 has melted the icy sand all about. The loose 
 sand is carried off by the wind leaving a small 
 tableland or butte of hard sand which is gen- 
 erally undercut to the mushroom shape. 
 
 It is not always so easy to discover an explana- 
 tion for sand formations in freezing or thawing 
 weather. One of the most curious is one that 
 I have several times found at the end of a severe 
 winter in shallow pools of water in the dunes, 
 where mounds a foot or two across with rounded 
 and irregularly curved slopes appear to have 
 risen up above the water. The cracks in some of 
 them early in the season point to underlying 
 snow. They look like geological models. As 
 the water of the pools sink, these mounds appear 
 stranger still, surrounded as they are by ir- 
 regular ridges and grooves of sand, that look 
 as if a monster king-crab had been ploughing his 
 way through the wet sand. 
 
 Later in the season some of the pools are 
 
FROZEN SAND COLUMNS, "tOADSTOOLS' 
 
 SAND KETTLE-HOLE 
 
CRACKS IN SAND OVER SNOW 
 
 FROST CRACK AND RETREAT OF DUNES BEFORE THE SEA 
 
ICE AND SNOW IN THE DUNES 99 
 
 bordered by zones of small crater-like pits with 
 as ragged edges as the craters on the moon. The 
 cause and method of formation, at first obscure, 
 was solved by digging in the soft sand of this 
 zone. Then it was found that bubbles of gas 
 from imprisoned and decaying vegetation formed, 
 on bursting at the surface of the soft and watery 
 sand, these miniature craters. 
 
 In the spring one may find in hollows in the 
 dunes circular depressions about a foot across 
 and three or four inches deep, marked with con- 
 centric and radial cracks in the sand. These 
 are to be found singly or grouped in such numbers 
 that they also suggest the craters on the moon. 
 It is probable they are formed in the same man- 
 ner as glacial kettle-holes and I have therefore 
 called them miniature glacial kettles. 
 
 Glacial kettle-holes occur commonly in the 
 glacial drift or gravel throughout New Eng- 
 land as well as in other parts of the glacier- 
 visited world. They are pits a few feet to a 
 hundred feet deep, and as many yards across 
 and more or less circular in form. Their sur- 
 rounding banks are as steep as the gravel will 
 
loo BEACH GRASS 
 
 lie, and often grown up to bushes and trees. 
 Generally dry in summer, they contain small 
 ponds in the spring. A good example is not far 
 from my house at Ipswich. They are believed 
 to have been formed at the end of the last glacial 
 period by the slow melting of detached masses 
 of ice buried in the moraine. 
 
 I had always some difficulty in picturing in 
 my mind the formation of these familiar features 
 in glacial landscapes until I came across a descrip- 
 tion by John Muir of a kettle-hole in process of 
 formation in Alaska. "I found a pit," he says, 
 "eight or ten feet deep with raw shifting sides 
 countersunk abruptly in the rough moraine mate- 
 rial and at the bottom, on sliding down by the 
 aid of a lithe spruce tree that was being under- 
 mined, I discovered, after digging down a foot 
 or two, that the bottom was resting on a block 
 of solid blue ice which had been buried in the 
 moraine perhaps a century or more, judging by 
 the age of the tree that had grown above it. 
 Probably more than another century will be re- 
 quired to complete the formation of this kettle 
 by the slow melting of the buried ice-block. The 
 
ICE AND SNOW IN THE DUNES loi 
 
 moraine material of course was falling in as the 
 ice melted, and the sides maintained an angle as 
 steep as the material would lie." 
 
 The "miniature kettles" in the dunes are damp 
 and cracked, indicating melting snow beneath. 
 The truth of this surmise is easily proved by- 
 digging through the two or three inches of sand. 
 Detached nodules of snow covered with sand in 
 melting reproduce on a small scale the kettle- 
 holes of the glacial period. When the snow is 
 all melted the sand dries up, the cracks disappear, 
 the dry sand slips down and blows into the hole 
 and this interesting reminder of the great glacial 
 period is obliterated. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 Ice Formations in the Salt Marshes 
 
 ''or to reside 
 In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice'' 
 
 — Shakespeare 
 
 THE salt marshes, intersected by winding 
 creeks and cut by larger estuaries, are 
 always scenes of beauty and interest in 
 winter. Usually there are pools and veins of 
 blue water which relieve the universal whiteness, 
 but, in severe seasons, all alike is icebound. As 
 far as the eye can see, all is glistening ice. At 
 dead low tide, the smallest creeks are roofed 
 over at the level of the marsh and the tide rushes 
 and gurgles back and forth unseen below. 
 Creeks a little larger are choked with huge cakes 
 of ice that balance on their edges, fill their depths 
 or form ice bridges at various parts of their 
 courses. In the still larger creeks, the banks are 
 capped, coated, pillared and buttressed in ice, 
 while the body of the creek is covered with a 
 
 102 
 
A CREEK IN WINTER AT LOW TIDE 
 
 VENDOME DUNE FROM THE FROZEN ESTUARY 
 
ICE FORMATIONS IN MARSHES 103 
 
 thick sheet that rests on the flats at low tide and 
 bridges the deeper channel, and at high tide 
 floats at the level of the marsh. 
 
 As one walks at low tide in the icy depths of 
 these creeks, careful to avoid stepping on a loose 
 cake that may conceal a deep hole in the channel 
 below, one might be in the arctic regions, miles 
 and ages removed from the veneer of civiliza- 
 tion. No sign of human handwork is to be seen ; 
 no smoke curling from chimneys; no bushes or 
 trees or other evidences of the temperate zone. 
 Each turn of the creek opens up new and strange 
 visions of icy grandeur and beauty; overhead, 
 the blue vault of the sky; underfoot, and all 
 about, ice, ice — nothing but ice. Like a primi- 
 tive man, one is dependent on wits and vigor. 
 The illusion is strengthened if one wears Eskimo 
 clothing, sealskin boots, sealskin mittens and 
 fur koolatuk. Dressed in these, one may defy 
 the cold and sit in comfort on an ice cake with 
 the thermometer 10° F., below zero. My koola- 
 tuk is of caribou fur and was made by Labrador 
 Eskimos. It goes on over the head like 
 a jumper and is provided with a hood. As 
 
104 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the fashion is in Labrador, the hood has a point 
 behind. In Greenland, the same article of ap- 
 parel is called a koolatah and is rounded behind, 
 lacking the point. Althdugh it weighs but four 
 and a half pounds it is warmer than many a 
 modern fur coat weighing more than twice that 
 amount. The reason is a simple one. Imagine 
 two bags filled with hot air. One of the bags 
 is slit down the front and buttoned up, the other 
 is intact; the hot air is constantly escaping from 
 the iirst, which represents the modem fur coat, 
 and is held in the second, which represents the 
 koolatuk. With hood fastened securely around 
 the face, the thick fur is a bar to the escape of air 
 above. The hot air is less likely to escape below, 
 but, in very cold weather, one ties a rope around 
 the waist over the koolatuk, and the warmth of 
 the garment is sensibly increased. This trick 
 I learned from Donald G. McMillan, the arctic 
 explorer. Deep-sea fishermen in severe weather 
 tie a rope around their jumpers for the same pur- 
 pose and call it their "soul and body lashing,'' 
 as it helps to keep soul and body together. A 
 day taken from our modern steam-heated life 
 
ICE FORMATIONS IN MARSHES 105 
 
 and spent in playing Eskimo is refreshing to 
 soul and body alike and helps to keep them to- 
 gether I 
 
 The ice floor of the creeks and estuaries is 
 pushed up by the mighty hydraulic power of the 
 tides for eight or nine feet twice in twenty-four 
 hours, and twice it sinks back again. Long cracks 
 parallel with the banks, through which at times 
 the green sea water escapes, only to be frozen in 
 solid lakelets, permits this up and down motion. 
 In very cold weather, the solid ice rises and falls 
 with surprisingly little disturbance. In places, 
 pressure ridges form and the ice is sometimes 
 forced up from all sides into hummocks. In 
 the times of the full moon when there is an un- 
 usually high course of tides, especially if the tide 
 is urged farther landward by an easterly gale, 
 the water breaks loose over the marshes and great 
 cakes of ice are strewn about in wild confusion. 
 Woe to the summer constructions of boat-land- 
 ings and houses ! Everything must give way be- 
 fore the mighty hydraulic pressure. The water 
 freezing between the cakes later cements the 
 whole into one solid mass. 
 
io6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 At night when the moon is full, the ice-strewn 
 marshes have a strange and unearthly beauty. 
 One may wander over them as in a dream. The 
 sparkling ice, which almost obliterates the shad- 
 ows by its brilliant diffused light, makes an ex- 
 cursion at that time one long to be remembered. 
 Although everything seems as bright as day, the 
 brilliancy is deceptive and distances and objects 
 are difficult to judge and recognize. One may 
 suddenly step down several feet where all seemed 
 on the same plane. The brilliancy of the scene 
 at the full of the moon is so great that a photo- 
 graph may be taken which differs in no respect 
 from that of a daylight photograph. The ex- 
 posure needed, although longer, is surprisingly 
 short owing to the brilliant reflections from the 
 snow and ice. The accompanying plate is from 
 a seven minutes exposure taken at nine in the 
 evening. 
 
 The large cakes of ice, stranded on the marsh 
 assume at times curious forms. At first of nearly 
 uniform thickness and rectangular on their 
 broken sides, they become rounded, cavernous or 
 arched and often take on strange and bizarre 
 
THE MARSH IN WINTER 
 
 HE MARSH BY MOONLIGHT (scvm minutc cxposurc) 
 
THE ICE ANT-EATER 
 
 THE ICE BEAR 
 
ICE FORMATIONS IN MARSHES 107 
 
 shapes. With a little imagination, I have been 
 able to distinguish a polar bear and a lamb ami- 
 ably and incongruously roaming the ice-fields to- 
 gether. These suggest the curious shapes and 
 cavernous structure seen in icebergs due to the 
 undercutting and wash of the waves. It is evi- 
 dent that undercutting by high tides is to some 
 extent responsible for the formations, but some 
 of them have not been reached by the salt-water 
 since the time they were stranded. The melting 
 of the lower, more salty layers of the ice cake 
 while the upper fresh-water and snow-ice remain, 
 are probable factors in their formation. The thin 
 ice arch shown in the illustration suggests the 
 bending of the plastic ice, but this form would 
 require lateral pressure at the two ends. It bend- 
 ing took place from gravity, a reversed arch 
 would result, as the supports are at the two ends. 
 It is probable, therefore, that the arch form is 
 due, not to bending, but to undercutting and melt- 
 ing of the lower salty ice. The arch is appar- 
 ently a later stage of the cavern. 
 
 As the ice melts from the marsh the large cakes 
 endure the longest, and of these the ones that are 
 
io8 BEACH GRASS 
 
 covered with thatch and marsh grass are slowest 
 in melting. The pale yellow marsh grass shields 
 the ice from the sun's rays, while the cakes that 
 have ploughed up mud on the surface, attract the 
 sun's rays and melt quickly. 
 
 In the" severe winter of 1919-20 the salt 
 marshes were early covered thick with ice frozen 
 to the marsh, and the smaller creeks were all so 
 securely roofed that the ice there remained at 
 the level of the marsh even at low tide. A warm 
 week in March, followed by a southwest rain, 
 served to diminish this ice coating to a large ex- 
 tent, and the ice disappeared from the marsh 
 without the usual forcible disruption of storm 
 tides and broken ice cakes. On March 14 only 
 the larger creeks below Castle Island were open 
 and showed dark water, — the broad marsh and 
 the smaller creeks were still one universal white- 
 ness. It was a cold day with a bitter northwest 
 wind. All the surface water pools were smoothly 
 frozen and walking over the marsh was unim- 
 peded by ice cakes but had an element of danger. 
 The roofs of the smaller creeks were generally 
 intact, but had been so thinned by the sun and 
 
ICE FORxMATIONS IN MARSHES 109 
 
 rain above, and by the gradually warming waters 
 below, that in places they were of paper thinness. 
 One took chances in crossing them. Alpine rop- 
 ing would have been desirable. In other places, 
 the icy roof was eaten away into a delicate fret- 
 work of lace, and, through the larger holes, one 
 could see the swirling tide below. As a rule, 
 however, with a little preliminary testing and 
 good selection, the creeks could be crossed on safe 
 bridges. 
 
 When the marshes are free from ice, a snow- 
 storm late in the spring may whiten them tempo- 
 rarily, but an unusually high tide transforms 
 them to a dark plane in a white setting of up- 
 land. The marshes look particularly black at 
 these times. The reverse or negative ot this 
 scene appears in cold weather when there is no 
 snow. The marshes are white with ice, while 
 the setting of hills and fields is brown and bare. 
 
 A heavy snowstorm in w^inter renders a cross- 
 ing of the marshes an uncertain performance. 
 One may meet some surprises. This happened to 
 me in a February storm in 1916. I was taking 
 a short cut across the marshes on snowshoes. 
 
I 
 
 no BEACH GRASS 
 
 and, on account of the blinding gusts of fine 
 powdered snow, did not notice that the tide had 
 filled one of the creeks in my path. The coat- 
 ing of slush ice and snow concealed the water 
 and, before I was aware of it, I was floundering 
 in the mixture, but by kicking off my snowshoes, 
 I managed speedily to reach shore. Two other 
 surprises on this cross-marsh walk were more 
 pleasing. Twice I flushed from a few inches 
 in front of the tip of my snowshoe meadowlarks 
 that had been hiding in well protected nooks in 
 the snow-covered grass. Their bowers were 
 drifted over by the light snow, through which 
 they burst like bombs in flight. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Uplands in Winter 
 
 ''Around the glistening wonder bent 
 The blue walls of the firmament. 
 No cloud above, no earth below, — 
 A universe of sky and snowP' 
 
 — Whittier 
 ''Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?'' 
 
 Job, XXXVll, 22 
 
 WHETHER careful statistics would 
 confirm my observation or not I do 
 not know, but it has often seemed to 
 me to be a fact that weather has a habit of re- 
 peating itself at intervals of a week. This was 
 certainly the case in the early months of the year 
 1920. Every Saturday for eight or nine times in 
 succession, there was a snow-storm, and as that 
 was the day I went to Ipswich for the week-end, 
 my friends offered me sympathy. Inwardly I re- 
 joiced in great measure, for not only were my 
 
 III 
 
112 BEACH GRASS 
 
 week-ends made the more interesting, but I al- 
 ways secretly hoped that the storm would block 
 the trains for my return and thereby prolong my 
 stay. 
 
 With snowshoes I was always able to walk 
 to and from my house and the station, but trains 
 are more easily blocked. In the early days of 
 the snow, I had not prepared for this emergency 
 and had left the shoes in the Ipswich house. 
 Consequently late one Saturday afternoon in 
 January, I found myself with a friend at the 
 Ipswich railroad station, separated by three miles 
 and a half of snow-blocked road from our des- 
 tination and suitable foot gear, a distance that 
 could not be traversed by either horse or motor. 
 
 It had snowed intermittently for a week and 
 two feet of snow on a level had fallen. For the 
 last twenty-four hours it had blown a gale from 
 the northeast and the air was filled with driving 
 snow. The walk through the village streets, 
 banked up with snow and embowered in great 
 overarching elms, their branches snow-covered, 
 glistening in the street lights, was pleasant and 
 easy. In the lee of Heart-break Hill the snow 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 1 1 3 
 
 was falling softly and evenly, and was unbroken 
 by any recent track of sleigh or man. Beyond 
 we began to feel the great sweep of the wind from 
 the north across the marshes, and its biting breath 
 and sharp snow crystals made us pull our caps 
 over our faces. At the farther side of Burnham\s 
 Hill the road became impassable; it was packed 
 with drifts from side to side. I knew from old 
 experience that this condition must extend as 
 far as the North-Gate Road, and that the only 
 escape was to take to the fields to the north on 
 the edge of the salt marsh. In the darkness and 
 whirling snow, we had blundered into the drifts 
 without seeing them, and only by slowly and pain- 
 fully walking on our knees we were enabled to 
 escape. Attempts to walk on our feet resulted 
 in our sinking into the drift above our waists 
 when progress was necessarily very slow. In 
 the fields all recent snow had been instantly 
 stripped off by the winds which went roaring by 
 to deposit its burden in the road in the lee ot the 
 stone wall and bushes, and a glossy crust, not 
 strong enough to support us, and breaking at each 
 step, here made our progress slow. It was a wild 
 
114 BEACH GRASS 
 
 night, but with a companion on whom I could 
 depend and with assured shelter at the end, al- 
 though there was none on the way, I had no need 
 to worry about my ability to accomplish the task. 
 We did not hurry and we stopped about halfway 
 in the lee of some spruces to rest and ingest a 
 few calories in the form of sweet chocolate. As 
 we neared the end of our journey, the roar of 
 the surf on the shore added to the tumult made 
 by the wind. After our two hours struggle, the 
 house looked inviting although it was dark and 
 cold. As we entered the shed, a pheasant, shel- 
 tered in its lee, went whirring off into the dark- 
 ness and the storm. We soon had a hot fire and 
 a hot supper and bid defiance to the storm, which 
 shook the house and roared about us like a baffled 
 beast. 
 
 The Indian chieftain Rain-in-the-Face probably 
 understood the pleasure and stimulation derived 
 from the pelting of rain, and the still more pleas- 
 ureable sensation of driving snow in the face : 
 
 ''Give me to struggle with weather and wind 
 Give me to stride through the snow; 
 
THE UPL.\NDS IN WINTER 
 
 1 1 
 
 Give me the feel of the dull on my checks 
 And the glow and the glory within F' 
 
 The Eskimos would call my hill-to]) on the sea- 
 shore anoatok — the wind-loved spot. The sound 
 of the winds hurrying by, the tone constantly 
 changing is one of the pleasures of life, too little 
 appreciated. In fact, most people complain of it 
 and say they are wearied and all unstrung by it. 
 It may be that this is a habit of mind that goes 
 back to the time when our savage ancestors, poorly 
 clad and housed, feeling the dire effects of the 
 wind and of the struggle against it, endowed it 
 with fierce and diabolical characteristics. An op- 
 posite habit of mind, one of joy, of pleasure and 
 of appreciation of the varied sounds of the wind 
 is worth cultivation. 
 
 ''Long ago was I friends with the wind ; J am 
 friends with it yet.'' 
 
 My usual route from the town to my house in 
 winter is by an old road which leads north of 
 Heart-break Hill and crosses Labor-in-vain Creek 
 near its junction with the Ipswich River. I have 
 
ii6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 often pictured the early settlers coming back to 
 town in their boats from a day's fishing, painfully 
 pulling at the clumsy oars against a head wind or 
 tide, and mistaking the wide outlet of this creek 
 for the m.ain river. In a few rods more, the 
 rapidly narrowing creek would show them that 
 their labor had been in vain. An English oak 
 with small leaves and long peduncled acorns 
 stands near here, a descendent perhaps of one 
 planted by the early settlers. 
 
 The rough and very little-travelled road be- 
 yond the bridge through the salt marshes is over- 
 flowed by the tide at the full of the moon, and 
 I have occasionally been obliged to wade through 
 icy waters. In winter when all is tight frozen 
 my usual route is across the marshes and smaller 
 creeks to the foot of Sagamore Pond, the upper 
 end of which is within a third of a mile of my 
 house. Towards night in severe weather, the ex- 
 pansion of the ice in freezing, cracks it with loud, 
 booming explosions which travel over the pond 
 in all directions. It is an enjoyable sound, one 
 of the interesting sounds of Nature. Aside from 
 its associations with the broad expanse of frozen 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 
 
 1 1 
 
 ponds and with clear cold weather, its dee[) mel- 
 low sound is pleasing. 
 
 Short cuts are not always the shortest way, 
 for the longest way round is often the shortest 
 way home. I remember on a dark rainy ni^ht in 
 Eebruary, when pools of water stood in every 
 depression in the ice, I followed the old road for 
 most of the way, but took a short cut across a bit 
 of salt marsh. As I was striding along with my 
 ruck-sack on my back, I struck just below the knee 
 the single wire of a fence. The upper part of 
 my body kept on its way until it landed face 
 downward in an icy pool of water. But the 
 worst is yet to come I Before I could recover 
 from my discomfiture, my ruck-sack, which had 
 also kept on traveling, but was held within limits 
 by the straps, came down hard on my head. The 
 situation was so comical that it saved the day. 
 In future, however, I carefully avoided that wire. 
 
 Another short cut was taken on a January day 
 in 1907, an unusually mild day for midwinter. 
 Frequent torrential rains had scoured the country 
 clean of snow except in the deep woods and in the 
 shelter of stone walls, where a few dwindling 
 
ii8 BEACH GRASS 
 
 drifts still lingered. I had been prevented from 
 taking the only Sunday morning train for 
 Ipswich, but I managed to catch a later train for 
 Manchester. From there I walked the twelve 
 miles to my farm at Ipswich. The day was per- 
 fect. Hardly a breath of wind stirred, and the 
 warmth of the sun rendered a hat and coat un- 
 necessary. The Essex Woods road, so often trav- 
 ersed in summer by noisy automobiles and chat- 
 tering driving parties, was silent except for the 
 notes of winter birds that greeted me from time 
 to time. Chickadees, golden-crowned kinglets 
 and red-breasted nuthatches — three fast friends 
 were all there. While I was watching these birds 
 close to the ground at the foot of some lofty hem- 
 locks, I noticed a few scales of cones dropping 
 from above. Looking up I soon discovered the 
 cause of the disturbance, in the form of white- 
 winged crossbills who were busy at their feast. 
 Traversing the broad salt marshes, I arrived on 
 the shore of Birch Island opposite my house, 
 from which, however, a creek forty yards wide 
 separated me. The tide was at the flood, and 
 was rushing in with so much force that the water 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 119 
 
 was turbid with sand and its depth could not be 
 seen. I had made an erroneous calculation as 
 to the time of the flood. There was no time to 
 lose. Hastily removing my clothes, I tied thrm 
 up in a bundle and holding them on top of m>' 
 head I started to ford the creek. I was familiar 
 with the lay of the bottom, and hoped to be able 
 to cross without difficulty. It was necessary to 
 feel the way carefully to avoid stepping suddenly 
 into a deep hole. The water rapidly rose from 
 waist high to my shoulders, and, in one parti- 
 cularly deep spot, I felt the tide laving my beard. 
 Should I turn back or push on'? Fortunately I 
 took the latter course and soon came to shallower 
 water and reached the further bank. I then had 
 a run of several hundred yards to find a spot where 
 I could jump and splash across a smaller creek. 
 The run in bare feet on partly frozen marsh 
 served to warm me up. I hastily rubbed myself 
 down with a pocket-handkerchief and put on my 
 clothes. Arrived at the house, where I hoped to 
 surprise the family and find a warm fire and good 
 dinner, I discovered that the door was locked 
 and that the family were away dining somewhere 
 
120 BEACH GRASS 
 
 in the dunes. A cheese sandwich, however, 
 tasted good to the last crumb and a sunny corner 
 on the south side of the house was pleasantly 
 warm. 
 
 It is uncommon on this wind-swept coast for the 
 snow to fall gently on the trees and bushes, and 
 build up fairy palaces of beauty, or, if it does, it 
 is soon blown away by a rising wind. Often, 
 however, in sheltered nooks in the lea of higher 
 ground, the trees and bushes are loaded with 
 snow. Every branch, every twig bears its bur- 
 den, and the evergreens are glorious in their 
 white coating. If the snow is light and feathery, 
 it does but little damage, for an overload bends 
 down the branch and the snow falls off in a 
 powdery spray. The slighest touch or a puff of 
 wind causes a miniature snowstorm. 
 
 If, however, rain and sleet have coated the 
 trees with ice great damage may result from the 
 tightly fastened load. But one may almost for- 
 give the damage for the surpassing beauty of these 
 ice-storms. I was therefore most fortunate in ar- 
 riving in Ipswich at a week-end in February, 
 1920, just as one of these storms was clearing 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 121 
 
 away. Blown along by a cold northwest wind 
 filled with icy particles I made rapid progress on 
 snowshoes over the hard crust. As I reached the 
 foot of Sagamore Pond, the sun burst from the 
 dark clouds just before setting and illumined all 
 the icy trees with a flame-colored glow, which 
 made everything glisten and sparkle like a scene 
 in fairy land. The drifts on Sagamore Hill were 
 brilliantly prominent, each snow-wave burning in 
 old gold, shading off to a salmon hue, while the 
 sky above was rippled over with marvelous pink 
 and golden bars. 
 
 From my bed that night I could look over the 
 white marshes, dimly lighted by the stars, to the 
 ghostly waves of the sand dunes, the dark sea 
 beyond and Cape Ann with its twinkling lights 
 dominated by the steady red gleam from the 
 lighthouse at Annisquam. 
 
 The next morning I awoke at dawn. All the 
 landscape was in shadow, all was as blue as the 
 blue coverlid on my bed. I compared them care- 
 fully — the hue of the snow and the coverlid 
 exactly matched. Hog Island loomed up a 
 round dark blue drumlin and the level marsh, all 
 
122 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ice covered, was equally blue — a deep indigo 
 blue — everything was painted with it. As the 
 sun rose over the rim of the earth, gleams of gold 
 and flame shot out and at last illumined the whole 
 scene. Every weed-stalk, every twig, every 
 branch of bush and tree sparkled and glistened 
 in the morning rays. 
 
 I had intended to do some wood-chopping, but 
 the fascination of the scene prevented all work. 
 Its attraction was so great that I spent the entire 
 day wandering from place to place, finding 
 everywhere new scenes of beauty. From the top 
 of Sagamore Hill the great sparkling ice-fields of 
 marsh were spread below me. The trees of the 
 wooded islands did not look dark against the 
 ice as they do when bare, nor white as when 
 loaded with snow, but they were of a delicate 
 blue-gray and thickly beset with sparkling 
 brilliants. 
 
 Everywhere one turned, familiar trees and 
 bushes were transformed as if by miracle. Twigs 
 no larger than a lead pencil were covered with 
 clear ice until they were three and even four 
 inches in circumference. The long spikes of 
 
BIRCH BENT BY ICE-STORM 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 ■j 
 
 ttiyi 
 
 iip,.> jy^ 
 
 PW 
 
 rp^5^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 EDGE OF "forest" AFTER ICE-STORM 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 123 
 
 beach grass looked like curving crystal saws with 
 with narrow dark centers and long icicle teeth 
 below. The last years' fruiting stalks of the sea- 
 side golden-rod were thickly coated with ice. 
 Every hip and berry had its natural color en- 
 hanced through a covering of transparent ice, 
 just as beach pebbles are made to glow by wet- 
 ting or varnishing. Glace fruit adorned the 
 trees and bushes. Each little knob on the pen- 
 dant balls of the buttonwood trees could be seen 
 through the ice. The clusters of barberries, the 
 catkins of the birches and the great red torches 
 of the staghorn sumachs were all encased in clear, 
 transparent ice. 
 
 The ice was thickest on the north and east 
 sides whence the storm had come. Indeed the 
 west and south sides of the tree trunks lacked the 
 icy armor, but the berries and fruit as well as the 
 smaller branches and twigs were for the most 
 part completely encased. Careful scrutiny, how- 
 ever, showed that the sumach torches and even 
 some of the smaller fruits and seeds were vulner- 
 able on the southwest side, the lea side, so that 
 here the birds might get at their contents. Yet 
 
124 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the birds must have suffered greatly from the gen- 
 eral sealing up of their food. 
 
 Evergreen trees were but little changed in 
 color, for the transparent ice, unless it caught the 
 sun's rays, was almost invisible over the dark 
 green needles, yet the trees were so changed in 
 shape as to lose their proper outline. White 
 pines were so heavily loaded that their branches 
 slanted downward, and the trees resembled aged 
 spruces in the northern wilds. The transfor- 
 mation was remarkable. A balsam fir tree near 
 my house, instead of holding its branches diag- 
 onally upwards towards the sky, pointed them 
 down, and the tree looked as if it had been 
 trimmed to a pointed cone. 
 
 Gray branches everywhere bent over in grace- 
 ful curves till their tips touched the snow. In 
 open places like the dunes they were all pros- 
 trate to the south, frozen where the icy north 
 wind had left them. They looked like Samari- 
 tans at their devotions on the summit of Mount 
 Genzim. Their innumerable small branches and 
 fine divisions held such a load of silvery ice that 
 they could no longer stand erect under it. In 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 125 
 
 sheltered places, clumps of birch trees had pros- 
 trated themselves radially from the central point. 
 United they stood, divided they fell. Rarely 
 was a branch or twig broken, all had been pliant 
 and yielding to the load. Not so in the case of 
 the canoe birches, the white birch of the north. 
 This tree, here at least, is less yielding, and 
 broken and partly broken branches and stems 
 were common. 
 
 The tree that suffered most from this ice-storm 
 was the white maple. Its soft and brittle wood 
 was unable to bear the heavy load of ice, and 
 the snow underneath was covered with branches 
 and great limbs torn and splintered as if the trees 
 had been through a German barrage. Poplars 
 were also sadly broken and scarred as were to a 
 less degree the elms and the lindens. The icy 
 armor held the branches in a vise and they became 
 as brittle as the ice under the strain. All the 
 willows had become of the weeping variety. The 
 sturdy oak and apple and cherry hardly bent to 
 their burdens, much less broke, while native ever- 
 greens as a rule were unharmed. Hickories, 
 wahiuts, ashes and sumach — all with great com- 
 
126 BEACH GRASS 
 
 pound leaves — have no need for the fine branch- 
 lets, and sprays such as the elm and birch need 
 for the support of their little leaves. The mid- 
 rib of the compound leaf is itself the branchlet, 
 and, as this falls with the leaf at the beginning 
 of winter, only the coarse, stubby branches are 
 left. These trees, therefore, carry comparatively 
 little ice and the damage among them was 
 slight. 
 
 The suggestion of Christmas trees, hung about 
 with sparkling brilliants, is considerably increased 
 in ice-storms like this by the presence of spots of 
 red or blue or green light. I have seen these 
 spots on various occasions glowing as clear as the 
 lights of electric bulbs. They are due to the 
 splitting up of the white rays of light in prism 
 shaped icicles. By gradually moving one's po- 
 sition, the light is made to change from red to 
 orange, to green, blue and violet, while the re- 
 verse order of the spectrum can be brought out 
 by slowly returning to the first position. I have 
 seen such an icicle hanging from the branch of a 
 tree, that changed in color as the branch swayed 
 back and forth in the breeze. 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 127 
 
 In a wind the musical tinkling of many ice- 
 covered branches, and the jingle of falling pieces 
 of ice is a pleasant sound, but one grieves at the 
 breaking of twigs and the sharp reports and crash- 
 ing of branches that snap without bending in 
 their icy armor. The snow becomes covered with 
 broken twigs and branches and with splinters of 
 ice and molds of the branches an inch or more 
 thick, all sparkling in the sunlight. Progress by 
 walking through a field of tall grass and weeds, 
 thus bedecked with ice, is attended with much 
 crashing and musical jingling as the ice is broken 
 from the stems and flung on the icy crust. The 
 ice-storm of December 1921, which did such 
 grievous injury to trees a few miles inland, was 
 innocuous at Ipswich. 
 
 In the severe winter of 1919-20 the meadow- 
 mice and cottontail rabbits were hard put to it 
 for food and played havoc with young trees. 
 The devastation in young orchards was particu- 
 larly severe and many thousands of apple, pear 
 and other fruit trees were ruined. It is custom- 
 ary to protect the lower foot or two of \oung 
 orchard trees with wire netting or roofing paper, 
 
128 BEACH GRASS 
 
 as meadow-mice, working under the snow, are 
 fond of tender bark. In this winter when seven 
 feet of snow on a level fell during the season, 
 and when drifts sometimes buried trees ten and 
 fifteen years old to their tops, the work that went 
 on under the snow was extensive and not re- 
 vealed until the snow melted. Then it was dis- 
 covered that many trees were completely girdled 
 by the mice whose delicate teeth markings could 
 be seen covering all the wood from which the 
 bark had been removed. Many of the lower 
 limbs were girdled in the same manner and stood 
 out white and bare. The limbs showed also the 
 larger tooth markings of the rabbits, and the 
 leaf and flower buds were removed by their in- 
 cisors as if they had been cut with a sharp knife. 
 One ignorant of these matters, might be led to 
 think that some enemy had, in spite, pruned off 
 all the buds on the lower branches of his fruit- 
 trees. Indeed when one stands under an apple- 
 tree in spring and finds the buds cut off as high as 
 the arm can reach, a human enemy rather than a 
 diminutive cottontail is suggested. When the 
 snow is gone it is difficult to realize the condition 
 
BUSHES AND TREES IN ICE-STORM. A GLACIAL KETTLE-TIOLF 
 
 APPLE-TREE GNAWED BY RABBITS AND Ml ADOW-MU I 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 129 
 
 in midwinter. I took pains at that time to walk 
 on snowshoes over the tops of some of my h)w 
 spreading apple-trees of twenty years growth 
 that were engulfed in a great drift in the lea of 
 a bushy stone wall, but I found that when I 
 stated this fact the following summer I was looked 
 on with incredulity. There are some observa- 
 tions made with exactitude that it is better not to 
 repeat if one wishes to preserve one's reputation 
 for veracity! The snow under these apple-trees 
 was covered with rabbit droppings, and, as it 
 melted, tunnels of tield-mice crossing each other 
 and branching in all directions were spread out 
 like a map. Not only were cultivated fruit- 
 trees girdled but many of the native wild trees: 
 wild black cherries, gray birch, sumachs and even 
 evergreens. Many of these leaved out and 
 blossomed as usual the next summer but the sum- 
 mer after that they were dead ! 
 
 Another result of the severe winters is shown 
 in the creatures that have succumbed to cold and 
 starvation. Dead crows and black ducks I have 
 found, and twice I have picked up the frozen 
 bodies of myrtle warblers. These birds arc un- 
 
130 BEACH GRASS 
 
 doubtedly able to survive much cold if they have 
 plenty of food, but, in a dearth of calories they go 
 to the wall. I have measured all the crows I have 
 found dead and although there are not yet num- 
 bers enough from which to draw conclusions, it 
 would seem as if it were the small and weakly 
 that fall first. Doubtless many creep into holes 
 and die and are never found, or are eaten by 
 prowling animals. As the bird population re- 
 mains nearly constant and many young are reared 
 each year it is evident that a large number must 
 perish annually — but how few of their bodies are 
 
 ever seen! 
 
 It has been reported that in severely cold 
 weather birds are found with their eyes frozen. 
 I had always supposed that this took place only 
 when the bird was much weakened from lack of 
 food and was dying, or that it occurred after 
 death, for northern birds, with their active cir- 
 culation and high temperature, can stand much 
 cold provided they have sufficient food. On 
 May 31, 1920, after the severe winter, Mr. F. A. 
 Saunders and I were walking along the inner 
 beach of the dunes when we noticed a crow flying 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 131 
 
 towards us. It passed within thirty yards with- 
 out swerving from its direct flight, and both of us 
 noticed that the eye turned towards us was white. 
 It is most unusual for a crow to fly within gun- 
 shot of a man at Ipswich, and it is probable that 
 the crow was blind in one or both eyes. Had they 
 been touched by the frost or was it cataract? 
 
 After a severe winter, drifts of snow on bare 
 hills remain longest on the south side, some- 
 times in a series of girdling zones. One would 
 expect the snow to melt quicker on the southern 
 exposures, but, in the northerly storms of winter, 
 the snow collects in drifts to great depths on the 
 lea or southern side of the hills, while it is blown 
 off on the windward side. Although the sun is 
 more powerful on the southern sides, it takes 
 longer to melt the snow there on account of the 
 far greater accumulation. 
 
 Although the aurora borealis is not limited to 
 the winter season, it is displayed to greatest per- 
 fection at that time. One of the most beautiful 
 auroras I have ever seen occurred one cold clear 
 night in March, 1918, during the Great War, and 
 the superstitious might well have read omens m 
 
132 BEACH GRASS 
 
 its display. A series of white streamers radiated 
 from the zenith, constantly waving and changing 
 their places. Whole sections of the sky glowed a 
 blood red, as if it reflected a mighty conflagra- 
 tion or a mighty slaughter, and the snow was 
 tinged with the crimson flood. When this crim- 
 son sky was crossed with bars of white with here 
 and there patches of dark blue, it needed little 
 imagination to picture a draping of the sky with 
 Old Glory. 
 
 On another occasion the whole sky was marked 
 by waving, curving sheets of light, concentrated 
 in spots or radiating from the zenith. The col- 
 ors were varied and delicate, suggestive at times 
 of the rainbow, at times of the lovely greens 
 and yellows of the lunar moth. These rays and 
 folds of color moved about with great speed and 
 resembled the waving of soft silken draperies — a 
 skirt dance of the skies. The Cree Indians call 
 the aurora "the dance of the spirits." 
 
 The climate in this part of the country varies 
 irregularly not only from year to year, but also 
 from day to day. A sunny, balmy day in winter, 
 may be suddenly interrupted by a blizzard of 
 
THE UPLANDS IN WINTER 133 
 
 great severity, a warm rain may change to an icy 
 snowstorm, or the coldest weather be succeeded 
 by the greatest thaw. 
 
 ''First it blew afid then it sneiv^ 
 Then it friz and then it tJiew^ 
 Then there ca?ne a shower of rain^ 
 Then it friz and thew again.'' 
 
 Variety is the spice of life, and these changes are 
 interesting and even enjoyable — to one in the 
 mood. 
 
 The uplands are not always white with snow 
 in winter. The variation is a wide one. The 
 winter before this one of great snow was nearly 
 snowless, and the winter following was mild and 
 lacking in snowfall. On January 26, 1916, the 
 Fahrenheit thermometer stood at 66° at 2 
 p. M. and 58° at midnight. On January 26, 
 1913 the temperature at noon was 58", there 
 was no snow or ice to be found and there 
 was no frost in the ground. The fields and 
 marshes were brown and bare. Pheasants were 
 crowing and meadowlarks singing. 
 
 The persistency of winter and the variability 
 
134 BEACH GRASS 
 
 in the advent of spring in New England is well 
 known. On April 17, 1910, I gathered a small 
 mess of asparagus in my garden, the rhubarb was 
 up eight or ten inches, and violets, houstonias and 
 wild strawberries were in blossom. The larches 
 were clothed in green and the beach plum blos- 
 soms were nearly out. On May 7, 1918 the tem- 
 perature was 89°, all the trees had leafed out and 
 the lilacs were in full blossom. On May 6, 
 1917 there was a snowstorm at Ipswich the glass 
 stood at 39° at noon, and not a leaf was to be 
 seen except those of the wild currant. Not until 
 May 20 did the maples and lindens begin to leaf 
 out. 
 
 Sunday, March 26, 1922, was a balmy day; 
 the ground was free from snow and almost free 
 from frost, and the glass reached 80°. The 
 Sunday following, a fierce northeaster had cov- 
 ered the ground nearly a foot deep with snow, 
 and the temperature had fallen to 30°. Variety 
 is the spice of life. Therefore New England 
 weather is of the best I 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A Winter Crow Roost 
 
 ''At break of day I crossed the wooded vale: 
 And while the morning made 
 A trembling light among the tree-tops pale, 
 I saw the sable birds on every Itmb, 
 Clinging together closely in the shade. 
 And croaking placidly their surly hymn.'' 
 
 — Van Dyke 
 
 PRIOR to the winter of 1916-17, most of 
 the crows of the eastern parts of Essex 
 County, Massachusetts, spent the nights 
 in roosts in the pine thickets at Annisquam and 
 West Gloucester. Hither from all directions in 
 winter afternoons these birds could be seen wend- 
 ing their way. The general course of flight over 
 the Ipswich dunes was from north to south. 
 There were, however, several small roosts in the 
 Ipswich region. One was in a grove of white 
 pines and cedars on the south side of Heart-break 
 
 13s 
 
136 BEACH GRASS 
 
 Hill; another, which lodged about five hundred 
 birds, was in one of the pitch pine thickets of the 
 Ipswich dunes. In November, 1916, I discovered 
 that the ground under and near the large thickets 
 of evergreens and hard woods on the southerly 
 side of Castle Hill close to Ipswich beach was 
 covered thickly with crow pellets and droppings. 
 I was not surprised, therefore, to find that the 
 afternoon flight of crows was directed towards 
 these thickets, and that the birds were passing 
 over the dunes in an opposite direction to that 
 taken in former years. Whether the great roosts 
 at Annisquam and West Gloucester have been 
 deserted or not I cannot say, but it is evident that 
 the larger number of birds have transferred their 
 winter nights' lodgings to Castle Hill. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago the whole southerly 
 side of Castle and High Hills was pasture and 
 mowing land. The owner at that time began 
 planting trees on a large scale. ^ At first barely 
 visible in the grass these have grown to a height 
 of thirty or forty feet, and there is now a re- 
 spectable forest over twenty or thirty acres of 
 
 1 This was in 1892, and the owner was the late John B. 
 Brown. The estate is now owned by Richard T, Crane Jr. 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST i 37 
 
 land. The evergreen trees are largely European 
 species — Scotch and Austrian pines with spruces 
 and firs. There is a large grove of European 
 larches, and there are patches of willows, maples, 
 ashes, buttonwoods, and other deciduous trees. 
 
 In the short winter afternoons the crows begin 
 their flight to the roost long before sunset. By 
 three o'clock or even as early as one o'clock, es- 
 pecially in dark weather and in the short Decem- 
 ber days, this bed-time journey begins, while in 
 the latter part of February the flight is postponed 
 until half past four or a quarter of five. From 
 every direction but the seaward side the crows 
 direct their course towards the roost. Three 
 main streams of flight can be distinguished : one 
 from the north, from the region of the Ipswich 
 and Rowley "hundreds" — the great stretches of 
 salt marsh that extend to the Merrimac River — 
 a second from the west and a third — apparent!)' 
 the largest of all, broad and deep and highly con- 
 centrated — from the south. 
 
 It was the last of these rivers that on a coUi 
 December afternoon with a biting wind from tin- 
 northwest I first studied in compan}' w'l^h Mr. 
 
138 BEACH GRASS 
 
 Francis H. Allen. It was an impressive sight. 
 About three o'clock the crows began to appear, 
 singly and in small groups, beating their way in 
 the teeth of the wind towards the north. In fly- 
 ing over the estuary of the Castle Neck River they 
 kept close to the water as if to take advantage 
 of the lee behind the waves; over the land they 
 clung to the contour of the dunes. As we walked 
 among these waves of sand, the crows often ap- 
 peared suddenly and unexpectedly over the 
 crest of a dune within a few feet of us. Silently 
 for the most part, except for the silken rustle 
 of their wings, they flew over in increasing num- 
 bers until it was evident that they were to be 
 counted, not by hundreds, but by thousands. 
 Many of them alighted on the dunes to the south 
 of the roosting place; sand, bushes and stunted 
 bare trees were alike black with them. Others 
 assembled on the bare hillside to the east. About 
 sunset a great tumult of corvine voices issued 
 from the multitude — a loud cawing with oc- 
 casional wailing notes — and a black cloud rose 
 into the air and settled in the branches of the 
 bare trees to the west of the roost. From here 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST i yj 
 
 as it was growing dusk they glided into the evcr- 
 greens for the night. 
 
 The last day of the year 1916, I spent with 
 Dr, W. M. Tyler in the dunes. The wind was 
 fresh from the northwest — the temperature was 
 5° Fahr. at 6.30 a. m., 18° at noon and 20'^ at 
 6 p. M. As early as one o'clock in the after- 
 noon a few crows were seen struggling north over 
 and close to the surface of the dunes. Others 
 were noticed flying high and towards the south. 
 This southerly flight came from over Castle Hill 
 to the north, passed the roost and continued on 
 over the dunes. At half-past three some of these 
 birds, which were apparently turning their backs 
 on their usual night's lodging place, met with a 
 large company coming from the south and all 
 settled together in the dunes about two miles 
 south of the roost. Some of the birds coming 
 from the north, however, settled on the bare helds 
 by the roost, and their numbers here were aug- 
 mented by a stream from the west. This con- 
 course on the hillside set up a great tunuilt ot 
 cawings just before four o'clock. At live min- 
 utes after four, the united multitude ot north- 
 
140 BEACH GRASS 
 
 erners and southerners rose from their meeting 
 place in the dunes and flew low to join their 
 noisy brethren on the hillside. This river of 
 black wings from the south was a continuous one 
 and it was joined just before its debouch on the 
 hillside by the stream from the west. The river 
 from the north had split into two layers: the 
 lower flying birds came to rest on the hill — the 
 higher flying ones favored by the strong north- 
 west wind, continued on their way south, not- 
 withstanding the great current of crows that was 
 sweeping north below them. They joined their 
 comrades in the dunes and retraced their steps. 
 No signs of starvation and impaired vigor in 
 these unnecessary flights, or in the games of tag 
 in which two or more of the birds would at times 
 indulge I 
 
 The pace is now fast and furious. The birds 
 are anxious to get within touch of the roost be- 
 fore it is dark but none have yet entered it. 
 At 4.15 p. M., 135 birds pass in a minute from 
 the south on their way to join the concourse on 
 the hillside. A little later this southern river be- 
 comes so choked with birds that it is impossible 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 141 
 
 to count them. From our point of vantage in a 
 spruce thicket on the hill we can see that this 
 flock stretches for two miles into the dunes and 
 it takes four minutes to pass. The sj^eed of 
 flight, therefore, must be roughly about thirty 
 miles an hour. At 4.15 p. m. the sun sets, but 
 in the yellow glow of the cloudless sky the birds 
 can be seen pouring by from the west and south. 
 The bulk of the stream from the north now comes 
 to rest on the hillside for only occasionally can 
 a crow be seen flying to the south over the heads 
 of the southern stream. 
 
 At 4.35 P. M., Dr. Tyler and I again counted 
 the southern stream for a minute as they flew 
 silently between us and the lighthouse. One of us 
 counted 160 the other 157 birds, so it is probable 
 that our counts were fairly accurate. This con- 
 stant watching of the black stream from the 
 south against the white lighthouse produced in 
 both of us a curious optical illusion. The light- 
 house and dunes seemed to be moving smoothly 
 and swiftly from north to south I 
 
 At 4.37 P.M., a great cawing arose from the 
 hillside and a black cloud of birds rose up, some 
 
142 BEACH GRASS 
 
 to enter the roost, others to subside on the hillside. 
 It was evident that the birds from time to time 
 had been diving into the roost. At 4.40 p. m. 
 it was rapidly growing dark and the tributary 
 streams were evidently dwindling. Only 50 
 went by the lighthouse in a minute. Five min- 
 utes later it was nearly dark and only a few be- 
 lated stragglers were hurrying to the concourse 
 on the hill. 
 
 At 4.45 p. M., Dr. Tyler and I walked around 
 to the north of the roost, and, although we could 
 see nothing in the darkness, we could hear the 
 silken rustle of wings and feathers as the crows 
 were composing themselves for the night's rest 
 among the branches of the trees. The babble 
 of low conversational notes that went up from 
 the company suggested the sounds of a night 
 heronry, although c awing s and earrings were in- 
 terspersed with the kis and uks and ahhs. The 
 odor was that of a hen-yard. The temperature 
 in the grove, with its hundreds of corvine fur- 
 naces breathing out air heated to 105° or there- 
 abouts was probably distinctly higher than in 
 the open. We refrained from entering the 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 143 
 
 thicket, for any attempt to do so aroused the hirds 
 to flight. 
 
 In the dim light we could make out that the 
 hillside held between the roost and the sea was 
 still blackened with birds that were continually 
 rising up and entering the trees. Some of them 
 perched temporarily on the bare tops of the hard 
 woods where they were visible against the sky. 
 The noise and confusion were great. It would 
 seem as if the roost was so crowded that the 
 birds had to wait their time for a chance to get 
 in, and that a constant shifting of places and 
 crowding was necessary before the crows could 
 settle in peace for the night. Hence the pro- 
 longed and varied conversation; hence the pro- 
 fanity. 
 
 It was an intensely interesting experience, this 
 observation of the return of the crows to their 
 night's lodgings, and one wished for eyes all 
 about the head, well sharpened wits to interpret 
 and a trained assistant to take down notes. How 
 many birds spent the night in the roost '^ T\vM 
 is a difficult question to answer, but a rough esti- 
 mate can be made. There were three streams en- 
 
144 BEACH GRASS 
 
 tering the roost beginning at one o'clock and con- 
 tinuing until a quarter of five. The largest of 
 these was from the south, the next largest from 
 the west and the smallest from the north. The 
 greatest flight occurred in the hour before dark. 
 From counts made in the stream from the south 
 this flow averaged at least a hundred in a min- 
 ute or 6000 in the hour. If we suppose that an 
 equal number arrived in the combined western 
 and northern streams there would be 12,000 oc- 
 cupants in the roost, a very moderate estimate, 
 I believe. 
 
 Crows were not the only species that sought 
 refuge for the night in these evergreens. At 
 half-past four a starling was seen flying thither. 
 But the great flight of starlings appeared shortly 
 after four. There were about two hundred of 
 them — a mere nothing compared with the enor- 
 mous multitudes that are soon destined to in- 
 habit these regions, for the European starling, 
 introduced in some evil moment to these new 
 lands of the Western Hemisphere, is increasing 
 by leaps and bounds. This flock of two hun- 
 dred starlings flew by with a whistling of wings 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 14^- 
 
 straight for the roost, but, on its arrival, at once 
 began a series of aerial evolutions which lasted for 
 half an hour by the watch, before the flock finally 
 entered the roost for the night. At times the 
 birds would spread out like a mist on the hill- 
 sides, at times they would combine to form a 
 compact dark ball; again they would stream off 
 like a whisp of smoke, and turn and twist and 
 snap the whip in a most amazing manner. The 
 ex'hibition of this troop of starlings was that of 
 well trained performers executing difficult and 
 intricate evolutions without hesitation and with- 
 out fault. The rhythm and harmony of all 
 their movements was perfect; the speed of action 
 was so great that it was at times difficult to fol- 
 low them with the eye. They opened or closed 
 ranks, they deployed to the right or to the left, 
 they descended or ascended as if impelled by a 
 common mind or as if possessed of perfect tele- 
 pathic intercommunication. One could hear no 
 word of command and there appeared to be 
 no leader. The spirit of play was in it all 
 and the joy of untiring energy, of perfect mas- 
 tery of the air and of consummate grace and skill. 
 
146 BEACH GRASS 
 
 It was a marvelous and mysterious exhibition. 
 I have often watched from my house the 
 western stream of crows go by, bound for the 
 roost. With a strong northwest wind the greater 
 number fly in the lea of the hill close to the 
 marsh. A smaller number push their way in the 
 valley to the north partly sheltered from the 
 wind by the trees. It exposes himself to the full 
 sweep of the wind over the top of the hill. 
 When the wind is in the east the crows fly close 
 to the marsh and follow the windings of Castle 
 Creek. With a westerly breeze, however, the 
 birds fly high and, silhouetted against the sunset 
 glow, the birds pass over the hill at great speed, 
 alternately flapping and sailing. Those that fly 
 over the marshes keep at the level of the top of 
 the hill instead of skimming close to the ground 
 as they do in unfavorable winds. I have counted 
 eighty and at times as many as one hundred and 
 twenty passing in a minute in this western 
 tributary to the roost. Sometimes they tarry at 
 Birch Island and blacken the bare trees with 
 their numbers, and fill the air with the din of 
 their afternoon conversation. Of a sudden they 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 147 
 
 are off for their ni^ht roost on Castle Hill. 
 
 In the early months of the year 1919 the roost 
 was much disturbed by a great horned owl, and 
 temporarily ceased to be, the crows goin^ else- 
 where. The feathers of dead crows and great 
 outcrys among the living attested the crime. 
 Early in April, however, the crows returned as 
 usual to the roost; the owl had evidently taken 
 his departure for his breeding grounds. 
 
 The afternoon of the twenty-second of Febru- 
 ary, 1917, was cold and clear with a wind from 
 the northwest. I made my way to the top of 
 Castle Hill in order to watch the stream of crows 
 from the north. The first arrivals came at half- 
 past four o'clock. They were flying over the ice- 
 filled marshes of the Ipswich and Plum Island 
 rivers, on the lookout perhaps for a last scanty 
 portion of food before bedtime. On reaching 
 Castle Hill they flew up over its crest and glided 
 down into the hard woods to the east and west 
 of the evergreen roost. Here they took part in 
 the regular noisy evening crow reception of the 
 three streams before retiring for the night. 
 
 At the full of the moon on the sixth of Janu- 
 
148 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ary I visited the roost at 9 p. m., a time when 
 all well regulated crows should, I had supposed, 
 be sound asleep. As I approached the roost, 
 much to my surprise, I heard distant sleepy cries 
 like those of young herons, and when I reached 
 the edge of the roosting trees there was a tumul- 
 tuous rush and bustle of crows flying from tree 
 to tree and overhead. Strain my eyes as I would 
 only occasionally could I catch sight of a black 
 form, although the air was brilliant with the 
 moonlight and the reflection from the snow. I 
 turned back at once as I had no desire to disturb 
 the birds' slumbers but it was evident that many, 
 even at this later hour, had not settled down for 
 the night. 
 
 The morning flight from the roost takes less 
 time than the evening return. As I approached 
 it in the semi-darkness at 6.25 a. m., on Janu- 
 ary 7, a distant cawing could be heard and a min- 
 ute later nine crows were seen flying off to the 
 south, and three minutes later, nine went off to 
 the west. At half-past six, after a great uproar 
 of caws and uks^ occasional rattles and wailing 
 ahhhs^ a broad stream boiled up from the roosting 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 149 
 
 trees and spread off towards the west, obscurely 
 seen in the dim light except when the birds stood 
 out against the beginning red glow in the east 
 or against the light of the setting moon in the 
 west. As I stood concealed on the hillside 
 among a grove of spruces, the crows passed over 
 my head, noiselessly, except for the silken swish 
 of their wings, fully a thousand strong. Then no 
 more for over five minutes although the tumult 
 in the roost continued in increasing volume. At 
 6.40 the roost boiled over again, but the birds, 
 spreading in all directions, soon united into a 
 black river that flowed over the dunes to the 
 south. The settings for this black stream were 
 the white sand dunes and the luminous glow in 
 the east which had become a brilliant crimson, 
 fading to orange and yellow and cut by a broad 
 band of pink haze that streamed up to the zenith. 
 The morning star glowed brightly until almost 
 broad daylight. The sun rose at 7.14. At 7, 
 I entered the roost and hurried away the few hun- 
 dred remaining birds some of whom were in the 
 bare tops of the hard woods ready to depart, 
 while others were still dozing in the evergreens 
 
150 BEACH GRASS 
 
 below. The air was close and smelt like a hen- 
 house. Pellets and droppings were everywhere. 
 
 On the last day of 1916, Dr. Tyler and I 
 watched the crows leaving the roost. We ar- 
 rived at 6.40, too late to see the first departures. 
 From time to time we counted the birds going by 
 in the stream to the south and as our counts 
 showed a remarkable agreement they may be 
 taken as substantially accurate. At 6.45, 105 
 passed in a minute; at 6.50, 125 passed, at 6.55, 
 58 passed, at 6.58, 121 passed and at 7.00, 63 
 passed. 
 
 The starlings left the roost at 7 o'clock and 
 passed us with a chorus of shrill cries or perhaps 
 it was the swish of their wings that we heard. 
 They were intent on the day's hunt for food and 
 did not waste time on setting-up evolutions. At 
 7.13 the sun rose and the roost was silent and 
 deserted. 
 
 In the early part of the winter there is plenty 
 of food for the crows. The bayberry and stag- 
 horn sumach bushes, the poison ivy, cat briers 
 and red cedars are laden with their fruit. The 
 salt marshes and beaches furnish a bountiful 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 151 
 
 supply of food in the form of mollusks and 
 crutaceans as well as in dead iish and other car- 
 rion brought up by the tides. In fact, it is these 
 marshes and beaches that make such a great con- 
 course of crows possible; — the inland country 
 is able to support but a mere fraction of sucli a 
 multitude. If the winter is a prolonged and 
 severe one, the food problem becomes more and 
 more difficult. All the bayberry bushes that are 
 not covered with snow are stripped of their 
 berries; the red flames of the sumach are battered 
 and reduced to a spindling central stalk with but 
 a few red furry seeds remaining. The upper 
 beach, the source of so much food supply in dead 
 fish, crabs and mollusks, is encased in ice and 
 built up into a wall; the marshes with their 
 wealth of small snails and mussels is sealed sev- 
 eral feet deep in tumbled cakes of ice, and the 
 tide rises and falls in the creeks and larger estu- 
 aries under an unbroken icy mantle. All the 
 uplands are buried in snow. It is difficult to 
 conceive how this multitude of red-blooded, 
 active birds can glean enough food umler these 
 conditions. The number of food calories needed 
 
152 BEACH GRASS 
 
 by each crow must be large. But the crow, like 
 the Indian and all creatures of nature, is well 
 able to take care of himself and to utilize every 
 possible source of food supply. Neither a feast 
 nor a famine disturbs his equanimity, unless the 
 latter is too prolonged. 
 
 Although most of the birds appeared to be 
 endowed with plenty of strength and energy, 
 one at least on February 22 seemed to be suffer- 
 ing from the hard times. This crow alighted in 
 a feeble tottering manner on a post within forty 
 yards of me, and balanced himself with difficulty. 
 I walked to within thirty 3^ards of him when he 
 wearily took wing only to alight in a similar 
 way on another post a couple of hundred yards 
 away. When flushed from this he managed to 
 fly a few rods to the roosting grove. 
 
 Two other crows previous to this incident were 
 found dead near the roost. Both were normal 
 in size as shown by measurements,^ and neither 
 
 1 In "The birds of Essex County," p. 243, 1 recorded the ex- 
 amination of a crow found dead early in March, 1904. "The 
 body was greatly emaciated, the intestines nearly empty, and 
 the stomach contained only a husk of oats and a piece of 
 coal ashes. There was no evidence of disease. The bird 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 15^ 
 
 showed any signs of injury. One was very thin. 
 The case of the other is worth recording in de- 
 tail. It was on January first, 1917, that I dis- 
 covered a crow in the topmost branch of a sk-ndrr 
 fifty- foot ash tree on the edge of the roost. A 
 string had in some way become entangled about 
 one foot and the branch of the tree. Struggle 
 as he would he could not free himself and, al- 
 though he could perch at ease on the branch, he 
 often hung head downwards from it, exhausted 
 by his fruitless efforts. While I watched him 
 and searched my brain for some means for his 
 release, another crow repeatedly swooped down 
 and passed within a few feet or even inches of 
 the poor captive. Both birds were cawing vio- 
 lently. As it was impossible to climb the slender 
 tree I decided to go on to the beach, hoping that 
 in my absence fortune would favor the bird, and 
 that the string might become untangled. On m> 
 return an hour later the victim was still tied 
 fast, while on the ground a few yards from the 
 foot of the tree and directly in my path, was the 
 body of a crow still warm. No other crow was 
 
 weighed only ten ounces and was small in every way, — a casj 
 of the small and unfit perishing." 
 
154 BEACH GRASS 
 
 in the neighborhood. The dead crow was a 
 male of normal size, as shown by measurements, 
 its plumage was in good condition and it showed 
 every evidence of perfect health. No injury 
 could be found anywhere — there was no sign of 
 hemorrhage under the skin, in the abdominal 
 cavity or in the skull. Fat was present in con- 
 siderable amount, especially about the viscera. 
 
 In order to finish the story it may be recorded 
 here that by the forcible bending down of the 
 top of the slender ash so that the captive crow 
 could be reached from another tree this unfor- 
 tunate bird (of its sex I am ignorant) was re- 
 leased only to die on the following day. I shall 
 not attempt to answer the question as to the 
 cause of the death of the crow whose autopsy I 
 have related, but one is tempted to say that he 
 died of grief for the captive one. 
 
 On relating the case to the late Mr. William 
 Brewster, he told me of a guinea fowl and an 
 Egyptian goose that he had kept together from 
 their hatching out. Having occasion to put 
 chem in separate enclosures, he found that they 
 both refused to eat and were constantly butting 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST 155 
 
 their heads against the wire mesh that separated 
 them. United in the same enclosure again, they 
 proved to be most devoted friends, always in 
 each other's company. At last the guinea fowl 
 fell ill and died and the goose was found dead 
 on the following day. An examination showed 
 disease and emaciation in the case of the guinea 
 fowl, but no signs of either in the case of the 
 goose. 
 
 In this connection the following incident is 
 also pertinent. On a lawn near the sea at Mar- 
 blehead, Mr. F. A. Saunders and I discovered 
 the dead body of a Brunnich's murre, an arctic 
 sea-bird of the auk family that occasionally wan- 
 ders to our shores in winter. The bird had been 
 dead at least a week. Within a stone's throw, 
 just outside the breakers, swam a very live murre. 
 
 Curiously enough, a correspondent in Rock- 
 port related later a similar experience with a 
 dead and living murre, and, on February 5, k;22, 
 Mr. F. A. Saunders and I found a third instance. 
 On the beach at Ipswich was a dead Brunnich's 
 murre and not far away and close to the 
 shore swam a live Brunnich's murre, a most 
 
156 BEACH GRASS 
 
 unusual bird on a sandy shore. There is 
 certainly more than chance coincidence in 
 these three instances, which, I believe point 
 to the faithfulness of the survivor of a pair. 
 
 During the greater part of the day the roost 
 is deserted, but there is much to be learned of 
 the ways of the crow even under these conditions. 
 Pellets and droppings are everywhere on the 
 ground under the trees as well as in the sur- 
 rounding fields, and they are especially obvious 
 when the ground is covered with snow. The 
 fact that the snow in the fields near the roost is 
 well trodden by the crows and spotted with drop- 
 pings and pellets might lead one to think that 
 the birds had spent the night there, but these 
 studies have shown that the field was merely a 
 reception room where the birds met before retir- 
 ing for the night. 
 
 The pellets which are ejected from the mouths 
 of the birds after a meal and are composed of the 
 useless and indigestible portions of the meal, are 
 cylindrical in shape, rounded at the ends and 
 measure one or two inches in length and about 
 half-an-inch or more in diameter. In warm or 
 
TRACKS OF CROW TAKING FLIGHT 
 
 CROW PELLETS REGURGITATED 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST i ^-7 
 
 wet weather they speedily break up and iiiin<j;lc 
 with the soil, but in cold weather they freeze and 
 retain their form. A study of these pellets reveal 
 the nature of the corvine dietary. In times of 
 plenty, as in the early fall when berries are every- 
 where, the crows are extravagant and wasteful in 
 their feeding habits. Much nourishment is 
 thrown out in these pellets before it has had 
 time to be digested in the stomach. Like the 
 ancient Romans they empty their stomachs that 
 they may feast the more. Crows take no in- 
 terest in food conservation; the pellets at these 
 times show much wasted food. Not so in 
 severe winters when famine is close at hand. 
 Then every bit of the waxy coat of myrtle ber- 
 ries is digested off and there are no intact cran- 
 berries, as in the bounteous autumn, but onl) the 
 remnants of skin and seeds. At these times also 
 some ashes are to be found in their pellets, as 
 if the birds were trying to quiet the stomach crav- 
 ing by bulk, and hunger had made them bold in 
 visiting the refuse piles near houses. 
 
 I collected at various times, from November to 
 February, several hundred of these pellets, 
 
158 BEACH GRASS 
 
 amounting in bulk to 662 cubic centimeters of 
 material after the pellets were broken up into 
 their composite parts. This I sent on to the 
 Biological Survey at Washington and received 
 from Mr. Nelson, Chief of the Survey, the fol- 
 lowing report : "The examination of crow roost 
 material sent in by you has been completed by 
 Mr. Kalmbach. It proved to be a most interest- 
 ing lot of pellets containing many more specifi- 
 cally different items than are to be found in simi- 
 lar material from roosts in this vicinity. I am 
 appending herewith the result of this examination 
 The numbers connected with the more abundant 
 seeds are approximate, as they were secured by 
 carefully counting the seeds in a portion of the 
 material and then multiplying to get the total. 
 
 Insects 
 
 1 Sphseroderus lecontei (Ground beetle) 
 
 Trace of another carabid 
 
 Traces of two other unknown beetles 
 3 Hypera punctata (clover-leaf weevil) 
 1 Sphenophorus sp. (bill-bug) 
 1 Rhodobsenus tridecimpunctatus (bill-bug) 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOSl 159 
 
 1 Sitona hispidula (clover-root curculio) 
 17 acridids (shorthorned grasshoppers) 
 
 2 Gryllus (crickets) 
 
 1 hymenopteron 
 Trace of a fly 
 
 2 jaws of caterpillar 
 
 3 small Tineid cocoons 
 
 Other Invertebrates 
 
 Spider fragments and cocoon 
 
 Jaws of 3 Nereis sp. (marine worm) 
 
 100 Melampus sp. (Black-footed snail) 
 
 A few fragments and about 750 operculi of 
 
 Littorina sp.? (periwinkle) 
 Mytilus sp. (Mussel) 
 Other moUusk fragments 
 Parts of a crab 
 
 Vertebrates 
 
 Bones of fish 
 
 Bones and scales of snake 
 
 Shell of hen's egg 
 
 4 Microtus pennsylvanicus (Meadow mouse) 
 1 Condylura cristata (Star-nosed mole) 
 
i6o BEACH GRASS 
 
 2 Blarina brevicauda (Short-tailed shrew) 
 Several larger bone fragments (carrion) 
 
 Plants 
 
 10,000 seeds of Myrica carolinensis (Bayberry) 
 1,200 " "Rhus radicans and R. vernix 
 (Poison Ivy and Poison Su- 
 mach) 
 1,100 " " typhina and glabra (Staghorn 
 and Smooth Sumach) 
 80 '' " Berberis sp. (Barberry) 
 360 '' " Oxycoccus sp. (Cranberry) 
 30 " ''Juniperus sp. (Red Cedar and 
 
 Low Juniper) 
 50 '' "Smilax sp. (Cat-brier) 
 100 " " Ilex verticillata (Winter berry) 
 2 " " Vitus sp. (Grape) 
 2 " " Solanum sp. (Night-shade) 
 A few kernels of oats and hulls 
 A few kernels of wheat and hulls 
 A few kernels of barley and hulls 
 A few kernels of corn (fragmentary) and hulls 
 Trace of buckwheat 
 Fragments of seeds of pumpkin or squash 
 
A WINTER CROW ROOST lOi 
 
 Seed and skin of apple 
 
 Pulp of pear C?) 
 
 Acorn 
 
 Meat of an unknown nut 
 
 A piece of rotten wood 
 
 A piece of cork 
 
 Miscellaneous 
 
 A rubber band 
 Gravel 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Forest 
 
 ''Besides the motives that have been assigned for 
 these plantations, it may be added that the Grand Khan 
 IS the more disposed to make them, from the circum- 
 stance of his dreamers and astrologers having declared 
 that those who plant trees are rewarded with long life'' 
 
 — Marco Polo 
 
 ONE does not associate a forest with sand 
 dunes and salt marshes but The Forest 
 has become such an intimate part of my 
 life in these regions, I would fain record here its 
 history and charms. All naturalists love a forest 
 for its varied collection of trees, for the vegeta- 
 tion of its floor, for the birds and animals it shel- 
 ters within its borders, and for its general charms 
 of darkness and quiet as well as for its sweet odors 
 and its varied voices To create such a region 
 within the limits of a twelve acre lot of grass land 
 
 on the side of a glacial gravel hill, bordered by 
 
 162 
 
THE "forest" in I906, APPEARING ABOVE THE GRASS 
 
 THE 
 
 "forest" in 1921 (from the same point] 
 
THE FOREST 163 
 
 salt marshes seemed an ambitious untlcrtaking, 
 but, with the enthusiasm of youth, although some 
 would have said I was old enou<j^h to know better, 
 I dedicated in the summer of 1900 an acre of nu' 
 grass land to what I fondly named my "Forest." 
 My objects were two fold: firsts to make a col- 
 lection of New England trees so that I might 
 become familiar with them in all stages of 
 growth. 
 
 ''No distant tree hut by his shape was known 
 Or^ near at hand, by leaf or bark alone.'' 
 
 Foreign emigrants were not desired. European 
 trees, so commonly planted about houses, were to 
 be rigidly excluded. Second, to make an attrac- 
 tive place for birds. On the latter account I in- 
 tended to plant the trees thickly, and, although I 
 might later thin them out to some extent, I did 
 not propose to prune off the lower branches in the 
 picnic grove style, nor did I wish to avoid the 
 crowding common to real forests, and attractive 
 to the birds, but not considered desirable by 
 arboriculturists. Not that I loved trees less, but 
 birds more. 
 
i64 BEACH GRASS 
 
 The first spring I transplanted pitch pines and 
 shad bushes, red cedars and gray birches by canoe, 
 or laboriously in bags on my back from the sand 
 dunes and the surrounding pastures and planted 
 them at random in the grass. It was a hot and 
 dry summer and nearly all of these died. 
 Nothing daunted I devised the following winter 
 a more active campaign, read all I could find on 
 the forestation of waste lands, obtained cata- 
 logues of tree nurseries, drew elaborate plans for 
 planting, with irregular openings and vistas 
 among the trees, which in my mind's eye I could 
 see spreading out over my head. My forest oc- 
 cupied much of my thoughts. 
 
 By intensive work on occasional week-ends and 
 holidays that spring I managed to plant 1400 
 spindling trees, not over one or two feet high, in 
 the forest, and about a thousand similar trees in 
 rows by an old hawthorn hedge. The latter con- 
 stituted my nursery from which I was to draw 
 later. Nearly all the work I did myself, but I 
 had a little help at times from an ancient gar- 
 dener from the village, whose knowledge in these 
 matters and flow of words was limitless. With 
 
THE FOREST 165 
 
 a heavy mattock I would chop a hole thr()u;^^h the 
 tough turf and loosen the soil sufficiently to insert 
 the roots of the little tree, pressin;^^ the earth 
 firmly around it. It was hard work but my pro- 
 phetic vision of the forest lured me on and I 
 labored hopefully. 
 
 Of the trees bought at the nurseries, there were 
 seven hundred tiny white pines, hve hundred 
 each of white maples, elms and red oaks and a 
 nearly equal number of ashes. Many of these I 
 intended as nurses during the growing period in 
 this wind-swept region, as trees do much better 
 under these circumstances when they are planted 
 thickly. In these early years I rarely went to 
 any place in the country that I did not come back 
 with specimens of the trees of the region, some- 
 times wrapt in paper in my pocket, or in my 
 traveling bag or — if a more extensive collec- 
 tion — packed in a box. With critical, greedy e}'e 
 I scanned my friends' fields and woods for m \v 
 seedlings. I brought red pines and balsam tirs 
 from Shelburne, New Hampshire, witch hazel 
 from Arlington, hemlocks from Brookline, scrub 
 oaks from West Roxburv and cedars from Brain- 
 
i66 BEACH GRASS 
 
 tree. William Brewster sent me some white 
 pines from Concord and other friends remem- 
 bered me from time to time, but most of all I 
 scoured the neighboring woods and fields of 
 Ipswich and especially the sand dunes for new 
 and interesting additions to my forest area. Old 
 Captain Ellsworth had saved for me a hne beach 
 plum near the lighthouse. As my time in the 
 spring and fall — the proper transplanting season 
 — was very limited I had need to transplant in 
 midsummer during my vacation. Fortunately 
 evergreens could safely be transplanted at this 
 season but my broad-leaf ventures were only oc- 
 casionally successful. 
 
 There had been no preliminary work, no 
 ploughing nor harrowing and no subsequent cul- 
 tivation — I had neither time nor means for these 
 — and I was convinced from what I had read 
 that, although these were of course desirable, 
 they could be dispensed with. I was prepared to 
 lose many of my trees in the struggle, but I felt 
 sure I should triumph in the end. Nothing ven- 
 ture, nothing have is often a good motto. 
 
 Many of my wise friends, looking down on 
 
THE FOREST 167 
 
 my little forest, shook their heads and said they 
 feared the trees would be root-bound by the grass 
 and remain poor stunted things even if they 
 managed to live. My brother thoughtfully sug- 
 gested I should put up a sign, "Do not tread on 
 the forest in the grass." Partly that I might 
 see the trees and thus gain courage, and partly 
 to aid their gro^vth, I used laboriously to cut the 
 grass about them with a sickle, and mulch 
 them. Occasionally by a miss-stroke, a forest 
 tree was laid low. I had great need to be 
 philosophical. 
 
 In those discouraging days the Myopia Club 
 of Hamilton held their annual fox-hunt or, 
 rather, anise-seed bag chase in our neighborhood. 
 One autumn morning, to my dismay, the rider, 
 with his anise-seed bag trailing behind, rode 
 straight through my forest. I arranged saw- 
 horses and stretched strings as temporary fences 
 to keep off the hunters and confine them to a 
 path below the forest, but in the afternoon the 
 red-cOated riders jumped the saw-horses and lived 
 up to their names by riding over the forest without 
 seeing it. I suppose they thought I had arranged 
 
i68 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the obstructions as hurdles for their pleasure. 
 
 After the chase had swept by and the red 
 coats, dotting the field, were lost to sight in the 
 distance, the whole family anxiously inspected 
 the poor neglected forest. Although there were 
 hoof prints close to some of the forest trees, not 
 a single one had been injured. They had had 
 many narrow escapes and I felt there was a future 
 for them. 
 
 At first my forest made but a pitiable appear- 
 ance. It vanished when the grass was tall and 
 green in early summer, but, with each returning 
 fall when the grass was brown and prostrate, I 
 was cheered by the reappearance of the little trees 
 on the hillside, and, after three years, some of 
 the trees were plainly noticeable above the grass 
 at all times. 
 
 At the end of the third year I took a census ; of 
 the trees by a method which I imagine is new to 
 foresters. I prepared two strings, each the length 
 of the forest, and tied rags to them at intervals 
 of ten feet. I stretched the first string along the 
 upper edge of the forest, the second ten feet 
 within the sacred precincts. In this way I laid 
 
THE FOREST 169 
 
 out squares measuring ten feet on each sitlc and 
 containing a hundred square feet, and I identi- 
 fied, counted and recorded all the trees and 
 bushes in each of these squares. Then I took 
 the outside string and lifted it over the forest 
 trees and over the second string. Again 1 counted 
 the trees in the squares and repeated the process 
 with the secc^nd string. By alternately passing 
 the strings over each other and over the loftiest 
 forest trees I was able to make a most intimate 
 and accurate census of my forest, and all it con- 
 tained and I plotted an elaborate chart of the 
 same. The result indicated about tifty-five dif- 
 ferent kinds of New England trees and some 
 twelve hundred individuals. At the end of this 
 chapter I have made a list of the different trees. 
 Nearly all the species are in the forest, but some 
 are now to be found in other places in my twelve 
 acre lot. 
 
 Time went by and it was evident that the 
 trees had won over the grass, which grew scantier 
 and scantier in the shade. Even the wild straw- 
 berries, that had at first increased with the killing 
 out of the grass, were disappearing, and I began 
 
170 BEACH GRASS 
 
 to introduce shade-loving forest plants — hepat- 
 icas, dog's-tooth violets, bloodroot and ferns. 
 Under the pines was a smooth brown carpet of 
 needles where a few years before had been a 
 mowing field. One coxild sit or even stand in 
 seclusion, hidden in the forest. I was filled with 
 pride and happiness. 
 
 It is an interesting and surprising thing that so 
 many different kinds of trees should grow so well, 
 or even grow at all in the same locality. Speci- 
 mens of nearly all the different kinds grew fairly 
 well. Of the evergreens the white spruce grew 
 better than the black or red spruce. It is in- 
 teresting to be able to watch and study these 
 tree species side by side. The pitch pine was 
 the most difficult pine to transplant on account 
 of its tap-root. The magnificent red pine with 
 its splendid long needles, two in a bunch, grew 
 luxuriantly. The American larch, frequenter of 
 bogs, grew vigorously on my dry hillside. The 
 only trees that did distinctly poorly were the 
 beech and the chestnut. Of the former only one 
 survives and that, after twenty years, is only 
 four feet high, but it is vigorous and promises 
 
THE FOREST 171 
 
 better growth. The chestnut is handicapped by 
 the blight yet two or three still live. 
 
 When the forest was in its fourteenth year 
 and some of the trees had reached the respectable 
 height of twenty feet, I planned a shelter in its 
 precincts. With the help of the light-keeper, 
 a lean-to was built in a clump of white pines in 
 the heart of the forest. The pines were some 
 of those Mr. William Brewster had sent me from 
 his farm in Concord, dug not far from his log 
 cabin on the Concord River. Theirs was a pleas- 
 ant association. They had reached a height of 
 twelve or fifteen feet and in one of them a crow 
 had built her nest. We dug four holes through 
 the brown carpet of needles and the black loam 
 to white glacial clay, and planted four stout 
 cedar posts. A slanting roof above of spruce 
 boards covered with shingles and a flat floor 
 eight feet square beneath completed the structure, 
 with the exception of wire netting on three sides 
 and cotton netting curtains in front. The crow's 
 nest, which had been deserted, made a convenient 
 shelf for our tools during the building. Inside 
 the lean-to there was room for two cot beds, and 
 
172 BEACH GRASS 
 
 a man could stand erect at the entrance. A post 
 planted in front with a few short boards on top 
 made a convenient writing table. Here I like 
 to sleep at night surrounded by my friends the 
 trees and from their branches come the songs of 
 many birds. 
 
 The birds early discovered the forest's attrac- 
 tions. During the spring and fall it becomes a 
 nesting and feeding place for many migrants. It 
 is an oasis in a desert of salt marshes to north and 
 south. Delicate warblers flying across the 
 marshes seek rest in its protecting arms. My 
 list of migrants is large, and, as time goes on, I 
 am inclined to believe, I shall find that many 
 will tarry there regularly. Birds, like most of 
 us, are creatures of habit, and, if they find a con- 
 venient stopping place — a good inn — on their 
 twice yearly journeys, they will come back to it. 
 For example, on three Memorial Days at intervals 
 of several years I have found a yellow-bellied fly- 
 catcher singing in my forest. Doubtless he 
 stopped there on other years, but, if the day were 
 neither a Sunday nor a holiday, his presence was 
 not noted. Although the spring and fall migra- 
 
THE LEAN-TO IN THE FOREST, APRIL 4, I915 
 
 ICE ARCH IN MARSH 
 
THE FOREST 173 
 
 tions of birds are surprisingly regular, they are 
 not always on calendar dates, as is the popular 
 belief, but are much influenced by the weather. 
 
 When the forest was still in its early child- 
 hood, song sparrows, yellow warblers and Mary- 
 land yellow-throats enjoyed nesting in its bushy 
 precincts. A pair of tree swallows nested in a 
 box on a spindling ash tree, and another pair in 
 a hollow tree trunk brought from the dunes. As 
 the forest grew, these nesting sites became too 
 shaded and hidden for the swallows, and, to my 
 great joy a pair of chickadees occupied the box. 
 
 The history of the chickadees' adoption of the 
 forest as a home is worth relating. Chickadees 
 have been occasional winter visitors to my farm 
 but, with the summer, they disappeared to more 
 congenial regions. They do not care for grass 
 fields and gardens, but need woods for their 
 domestic life. I therefore set deliberately to 
 work to make my place attractive to them all 
 the year. In winter I put food on a feeding 
 shelf and provided an automatic feeder to act 
 in my absence. As a consequence, several chick- 
 adees were always to be seen about the place that 
 
174 BEACH GRASS 
 
 winter. A further and more interesting conse- 
 quence resulted. The summer before there had 
 been for the first time a considerable invasion of 
 gypsy caterpillars into my forest, although I had 
 creosoted as many of the egg clusters as could be 
 found the previous winter. At every week-end 
 of the first winter that the little band of chick- 
 adees remained continually at the farm, they were 
 to be seen not only at my feeding shelf but also 
 in the forest, and the egg clusters seemed to be 
 disappearing. No creosote was used and at 
 the end of the winter the egg clusters were gone. 
 I have seen chickadees eating these eggs, and I 
 believe my riddance of these pests was due to 
 them, for, although the forest has never been 
 sprayed and the gypsy eggs have only once been 
 creosoted, the forest has been practically free 
 from this destructive worm. I regard this as an 
 object lesson in the value of birds in keeping down 
 insect pests. To obtain the best results it may 
 be necessary to spray the fruit-trees and some- 
 times other trees to save them, but, in so doing, 
 one loses to a large extent the beneficial work of 
 the birds. Moreover, there is strong evidence 
 
THE FOREST 175 
 
 that the poisonous sprays used result in a con- 
 siderable destruction of our birds. They drink 
 of the poison drops on leaves, just as they drink 
 from the same cups after a shower or a heavy 
 dew. 
 
 A pair of chickadees nested in a box in my for- 
 est that spring and nearly every spring since, and 
 their clear whistling "pee wee" and their familiar 
 and attractive ways added much to the charm of 
 life. On one occasion, in late fall, a chickadee 
 had entered through the open door the screened 
 open-air dining-room of my house. He was con- 
 siderably alarmed and fluttered against the wire 
 netting. Finally, escaping by the door, he flew 
 around the corner of the house, passing me with 
 the speed of a winged arrow, crossed the drive- 
 way and popped into a bird box by the stone wall. 
 He immediately turned and thrust his head out 
 and sang his clear whistling song as if in triumph 
 at his escape. 
 
 Birds in moments of intense excitement, even 
 when this excitement is not due to courtship, 
 sometimes burst into 3ong. An extraordinary 
 example of this once occurred in the forest m 
 
176 BEACH GRASS 
 
 late May. I awoke in the morning to find a 
 Maryland yellow-throat in the plumage of the 
 female flying distractedly about the lean-to try- 
 ing to get out, fanning my face at times with its 
 wings, and at times alighting on my pillow. It 
 had come in through the opening between the two 
 netting curtains at the entrance. As it could not 
 find its way out I reached over and pulled the 
 curtains apart, with the result of causing it still 
 greater fright but allowing it to escape. It flew 
 a few yards to a perch and at once, to my great 
 surprise, poured forth a song which could be 
 recognized as the "witchery" song of the male, 
 but much abbreviated and inferior in tone and 
 volume. It is possible that the bird was a young 
 male of the previous year, that, through some re- 
 tardation in development, had not yet assumed 
 the full nuptial dress of the adult male, nor the 
 full courtship voice, or it may have been, as it 
 appeared, a female, and, under the intense stress 
 of captivity and escape, had been wrought up to 
 the pitch of song. 
 
 One day in winter I found a handsome cock 
 pheasant safely sheltered in the lean-to. As 
 
THE FOREST 177 
 
 there were no mosquito curtains in front at this 
 season, his escape was an easy one. 
 
 In the lower part of the forest, just above the 
 salt marsh, is a springy place and fairly open. 
 An alder brought from the dunes grew vigorously. 
 It was perfect woodcock country in miniature, 
 but I never expected to find woodcock there. 
 However, early one morning as I was hurr} ing 
 from my lean-to for a bath in the salt creek, I 
 nearly stepped on two young woodcocks that 
 fluttered off into the bushes. After this on sev- 
 eral occasions I started an adult woodcock that 
 rose like a whistling meteor through the forest. 
 I have watched and listened every spring since 
 for the courtship song and flight of this interest- 
 ing bird, but as yet the pair have not returned. 
 
 To awaken on a spring morning and listen to 
 the morning chorus of birds is one of the greatest 
 pleasures that comes from my occupation of the 
 lean-to in the forest. Bird songs are also to be 
 heard there at night. The chipping sparro\N 
 sings occasionally at this season, the song sparrow 
 much more commonly. The black-billed cuckoo 
 sometimes pours forth his curious song not only 
 
lyS BEACH GRASS 
 
 from a perch but from the wing as he slowly flies 
 about the darkness. First he clears his throat 
 mast vigorously; then he calls cow a number of 
 times at regular intervals but soon changes to 
 cow'Cow^ coW'Cow or cow-cow-cow. His doublets 
 and triplets distinguish him from his yellow- 
 billed cousin, whose cows are as woodeny as if 
 knocked out by a mallet. 
 
 The cuckoo is called the "rain-crow" because 
 it is thought he sings before a rain. Many a 
 farmer has been cheered in a dry "spell" by hear- 
 ing the voice of this bird. I am afraid his song 
 is as of little value for meteorological predic- 
 tions as is the call of the bob-white, who is some- 
 times thought to say "more wet." The value of 
 the cuckoo to the farmer is based on more sub- 
 stantial foundation, however, for he is one of the 
 few birds fond of hairy caterpillars. The nests 
 of tent caterpillars may be seen full of punctures, 
 and cuckoos' stomachs are often fury with cater- 
 pillar hairs. 
 
 The ''stake-driving" of the bittern may often 
 be heard from my cot in the darkness before 
 
THE FOREST lyc; 
 
 dawn, less commonly the "pumping." Both of 
 these terms accurately describe the nuptial "song" 
 of this bird. When near at hand the bittern's 
 song resembles the sound of an old farm)ard 
 pump in action — kcr-chunk^ kcr-chunk. One can 
 even hear a preliminary gurgling. At a distance, 
 only one of the notes is heard which sounds for 
 all the world like the blow of a mallet on a post 
 — like stake-driving in the marsh. 
 
 Occasionally a Maryland yellow-throat sings in 
 the night or a kingbird indulges in his peculiar 
 song and dance which he is also prone to do in 
 the late evening when the light is so poor that 
 he is hardly visible. It is a zig-zag and erratic 
 dance, a dart this way and then that, high up 
 in the air, with an accompaniment of double 
 screams, harsh to our ear, but pleasing, doubtless, 
 to his mate. 
 
 In the dusk of spring evenings the song of the 
 greater yellow-legs, comes up from the salt 
 marshes, and one may get a glimpse through the 
 trees of the long-legged birds stalking about in 
 the sloughs or flashing out their strikingly white 
 
i8o BEACH GRASS 
 
 rumps as they fly. Their song has an appealing 
 tone and a romantic fervor and appears to ask, 
 will-yer^ will-yer^ will-yer^ 
 
 A true bird of the night is the screech owl and 
 his mournful serenade may often be heard in 
 my forest. The term screech owl is a misnomer 
 for he does not screech but utters a quavering, 
 mournful whistle which ends, — if one is near 
 enough to hear it, — with two or three guttural, 
 woodeny notes. Two other birds of the night fre- 
 quently announce their presence from the marshes, 
 the night heron by varied quawks and the black 
 duck by harsh quacks. 
 
 During the migrations, especially in the fall, 
 one can hear the birds calling to each other as 
 they fly over in the night. These calls, so evi- 
 dent to a bird student, are unheard by the or- 
 dinary man. To him they are non-existent and 
 he can be brought to hear them only with con- 
 siderable difficulty. He hears the noises of the 
 street or of the countryside, the distant sound 
 of voices, bells ringing or the barking of a dog, 
 but he seems unable to concentrate his attention 
 on the lisping notes and distinctive calls, so fa- 
 
THE FOREST 181 
 
 miliar to the ornithologist, that comes showering 
 down from the sky. 
 
 As is well known, most of the smaller birds 
 migrate by night. The reason of tliis is that they 
 are unable to find their insect or vegetable food 
 in the dark, and they must needs devote the day 
 to that important function, snatching a few 
 w^inks of sleep when they can. Birds that can 
 feed as they fly, like swallows and night hawks, 
 and also strong flying birds like the crow and 
 robin and, I believe, the hummingbird migrate 
 by day and sleep at night as usual. Many of the 
 ducks and shore birds migrate by day as the}' are 
 able to feed at night and all of them are strong 
 fliers. The delicate warblers, wrens, sparrows 
 and flycatchers make the long journeys at night, 
 and on favorable nights the air is filled with 
 their calls as they cheer each other on their 
 travels. 
 
 I am inclined to think, as a result of many 
 observations, that the first regular morning awak- 
 ening and song of our summer residents is that of 
 the tree swallow. It is a simple song a couj^le ot 
 notes frequently repeated, but, dropping down 
 
i82 BEACH GRASS 
 
 from the sky just before dawn from a multitude 
 of throats, it is a pleasing forerunner of the day. 
 The robin is a close second as an early riser, and 
 next the song sparrow. A robin gives a challenge 
 call, there is a rustle among the hundreds of robins 
 that roost in the forest, a bird carols forth and 
 soon the whole robin chorus bursts on the ear, 
 a glorious morning hymn of praise for the sun, 
 clear, rich pure and holy. A catbird sings from 
 the roof close to my head, a yellow warbler and a 
 Maryland yellow-throat from a birch near-by, 
 bobolinks and meadowlarks sing from and over 
 the fields, a kingfisher rattles as he flies over the 
 forest on his way to the creek to fish, and crows, 
 rather lazy about awakening, caw from the big 
 nut tree, or utter their crackling song. 
 
 Among the winter birds that visit the forest 
 the northern shrike is always worth seeing. On 
 rare occasions with us he sings, and he has per- 
 formed from a tree-top in the forest. To an 
 optimist his song is well worth hearing so abound- 
 ing is it in sweet musical sounds — full-throated 
 robin-like warbles, clear notes like the bell-tones 
 of a blue jay, and pretty trills. These he in- 
 
THE FOREST 183 
 
 tersperses with notes far from pleasing — har^h 
 and rasping ones — and a pessimist, having 
 these uppermost in his mind, would put tiown the 
 song as a very undesirable one. It is well to 
 pass lightly over the unpleasant things of life 
 and lay stress on the pleasing. 
 
 Audubon believed that these discordant cries 
 of the shrike were imitations of birds in distress 
 and that they served to beguile small birds 
 within its reach. This idea comes down from 
 the Middle Ages, for one Dame Juliana Berners 
 denounced for the same reason the European 
 gray shrike and stigmatized it as "an ungrateful! 
 subtell fowle." 
 
 The redpolls and siskins, the crossbills both red 
 and white-winged and the pine grosbeak have 
 all visited my forest from the north, and, on one 
 occasion, I was so fortunate as to find several 
 evening grosbeaks, that splendid yellow and black 
 bird of the northwest, feasting on the seeds of 
 the box elder. Of late years this accidental 
 winter visitor has become almost a regular visi- 
 tor, and he is particularly fond of the seeds of 
 the box elder or ash-leaved maple. This tree 
 
i84 BEACH GRASS 
 
 has been planted extensively in the Great Plains 
 and, it is believed that, beguiled by its seeds, the 
 evening grosbeak has been led even to our Eastern 
 Coast. 
 
 Not only are bird songs interesting and de- 
 lightful, but even the faintest calls and notes 
 may be the source of great pleasure. The 
 whistling call of the white-throated sparrow, the 
 lisp of the fox sparrow, the distinctive calls of 
 the myrtle and the magnolia warblers for ex- 
 ample, heard in the spring and autumn migra- 
 tions, arouse emotions which help to carry a man 
 through a busy and trying day. There is an 
 intellectual pleasure and a feeling of mastery 
 that springs from it, in being able to recognize a 
 faint call and to picture the exact appearance of 
 the bird, from which it comes, and to recall its 
 home environment in the north. One can smell / 
 the balsam fir and the fragrant Linnea, and feel 
 the cool breath of northern air. The ornitholo- 
 gist in particular or the naturalist in general, the 
 greater part of whose life is spent in the busy 
 haunts of men, leads a double life of which his 
 acquaintances know nothing, which is indeed a 
 
THE FOREST iS,- 
 
 sealed book even to his intimate friends, if they 
 are destitute of similar tastes and knowledge. 
 To their ears he speaks a stran<:;e hm<^aj^e, he 
 describes what is before them that they do not 
 see, what is audible to all, that they do not hear. 
 As a rule the naturalist is silent on these subjects 
 when he is among the Philistines, but enthu- 
 siastic and even loquacious when with the elect 
 and the sympathetic. 
 
 The list of birds I have heard from my cot in 
 the forest is a long one and I shall not burden 
 the reader with it. I have observed as many as 
 one hundred and hfty different kinds of birds on 
 or from my farm, many of these are birds of pas- 
 sage or at least nest elsewhere. In 1915 I made 
 a census for the United States department of 
 agriculture of birds that nest on my farm and 
 the list totaled twenty-eight species. All ot 
 these I have heard from my cot in the forest. 
 They are as follows: ring-necked pheasant, black- 
 billed cuckoo, flicker, phoebe, kingbird, crow, 
 bobolink, red-winged blackbird, meadow-lark, 
 Baltimore oriole, bronzed grackle, purple tincli, 
 goldfinch, vesper. Savannah, chipping and song 
 
i86 BEACH GRASS 
 
 sparrows, barn and tree swallows, cedar waxwing, 
 red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler, Maryland yellow- 
 throat, redstart, catbird, brown thrasher, robin 
 and bluebird. There is an advantage in dwell- 
 ing in a small forest : one can also hear the birds 
 of the fields and meadows outside. 
 
 The catbird is handicapped by his name and 
 is not appreciated as he should be. It is true that 
 he mews like a cat, but his song although varying 
 much, is always interesting and often sweet and 
 musical. It is interesting because the catbird is 
 a mimic — not nearly as good a one as his cousin 
 the mocking bird — but well worth listening to for 
 the surprises he affords. I was once paddling 
 on the Ipswich River when a catbird suddenly 
 swooped down across my bow uttering a rattle 
 that almost deceived me into thinking him to 
 be a kingfisher. A gifted individual that has 
 sung in my forest has imitated some of the de- 
 lightful strains of the rose-breasted grosbeak as 
 well as those of the red-eyed vireo, and has varied 
 his performance by scolding like a blue jay. 
 Other bird notes that I have heard mimicked by 
 catbirds are the chewink, the robin, whose alarm 
 
THE FOREST 187 
 
 note, dick dick^ he often imitates perfectly, more 
 rarely his song, the wood thrush, veer}', l)r()\vn 
 thrasher, goldfinch, flicker, bob-white and greater 
 yellow-legs. The call of this large wader, the 
 grand chevalier with the legs yellow, as the 
 French Canadians say, was so perfectly imitated 
 that I was not undeceived until I saw the catbird, 
 who changed his note on my intrusion to mews. 
 
 The catbird appears to be constantly impro- 
 vising and practicing new combinations in the 
 process of which he frequently strikes a false 
 or harsh note. While the brown thrasher avoids 
 these mistakes and regularly repeats each note or 
 phrase, the catbird indulges in repetition only 
 when a phrase happens to tickle his fancy. Thus 
 a bird heard from my cot sang a pleasing and 
 musical phrase that sounded like Fctcr-boro, and 
 repeated it five or six times. After this he 
 mewed to show that he was not too idealistic 
 nor stuck up, and then tried another musical 
 combination. Do not disdain to listen to the cat- 
 bird on account of his name in the same toolish 
 way that people decline to eat dogfish on account 
 of its name. There is unfortunately a great deal 
 
i88 BEACH GRASS 
 
 in a name after all, and even a rose called by 
 some vulgar name would not smell as sweet to 
 the multitude. 
 
 Another bird whose reputation as a singer is 
 not of the best, suffers unjustly, I believe, from 
 the imputation of being prosy, monotonous and 
 long drawn out in his singing. He is even called 
 a preacher in an uncomplimentary sense. I refer 
 to the red-eyed vireo whom I am glad to be able 
 to include in my forest orchestra, for to me his 
 song is one of quiet content, of a happy individ- 
 ual, philosophically and joyfully going about his 
 day's tasks with unhurried steps, of a sweet-faced 
 woman contentedly knitting, of a bird leisurely 
 gleaning his daily food and pouring out his soul 
 in thankfulness. One is not excited by his song 
 and does not hang on each phrase, but one may 
 enjoy it as a delightful background to the more 
 individual and detached efforts of other birds. 
 
 One of the birds that occasionally makes flying 
 visits to my forest, but sings not in the ordinary 
 meaning of the word, is the hummingbird. 
 Chiefly for his benefit I planted trumpet-creepers 
 about my house. It is probable that the long bill 
 
THE FOREST 189 
 
 of the hummingbird was evolved in order to 
 reach the nectar in these long-throated flowers, antl 
 that the flower was evolved so that the huniiiiing- 
 bird or insect in feeding on these nectaries should 
 bear pollen from one flower to another and thus 
 cross-fertilize them. Each species works for its 
 own good. It is not altruistic. 
 
 The hummingbirds at Ipswich have, however, 
 taken an unfair advantage of my hospitality in 
 planting these vines and a still more unfair ad- 
 vantage of the vines. Instead of drinkin;^^ the 
 nectar through their slender bills inserted into the 
 long tubes of the flowers, they have grievously 
 punctured and slit the tubes and thus made a 
 short cut to their food. Sometimes I am unable 
 to find a perfect flower — all are damaged. Such 
 actions are, as far as I know, most unusual.^ Is 
 it possible that an over efficient hummingbird 
 has discovered and perhaps taught others this 
 reprehensible practice at my farm*? This ojn'ns 
 up a wide held of conjecture. Let us suppose 
 
 ^I have recently read that the flowers of the tree-daturas 
 in Ecuador are cross-fertilized by a hummingbird with a loni: 
 bill, but that shorter-billed species rupture the corolla tubes 
 from without. 
 
190 BEACH GRASS 
 
 that in a region like Central America, where long- 
 necked flowers and hummingbirds abound, the 
 latter had universally adopted this short cut to 
 the food supply. The result would be disaster 
 not only for the flowers but for the birds. It is 
 evident that the flowers so pierced would not form 
 any more honey for future meals and would ul- 
 timately die. They would not be crossed-ferti- 
 lized, and even if they matured seed these might 
 prove infertile. It is conceivable that in this 
 way not only individuals but whole species of 
 flowers might perish, as well as the humming- 
 bird life dependent upon them. 
 
 The forest as a robin roost is worthy of a few 
 words. I had been hunting for a name for my 
 farm and, when the scientific name of the robin 
 was changed from Turdus migratorius to Merula 
 migratoria^ I welcomed the euphonious title and 
 called my farm Merula Farm. I have kept the 
 name although the powers that be have seen fit 
 to change the name of the robin to Planesticus, 
 As if in acknowledgment of my choice, the robin 
 has been so good as to select my forest for its 
 roosting place at night. Hither they have come 
 
THE FOREST 191 
 
 in numbers ever since the forest had reached a sap- 
 ling height, and have spent the nights troni June 
 to October. There may at times be several hun- 
 dreds, but I have never counted them. When 
 the female robin is brooding the young, the male 
 and his bachelor friends resort to this club-house 
 at night. Later they are joined by the juvenals 
 and, when all the broods have flown the nest, 
 doubtless by the females also. Before dusk the 
 robins come from all sides, frequently alighting 
 first in a field from which they dive from below 
 into the forest. Some of them alight on tall out- 
 lying trees and from there enter the forest from 
 above. Sometimes, especially on rainy days, the 
 birds drop down from the air without prelimi- 
 nary preparation. 
 
 On a pleasant evening in September I con- 
 cealed myself in the lean-to in the forest to watch 
 from the inside the coming of the robins to the 
 roost. At a quarter after five, by true time, 
 came the first arrivals, and soon the ground ami 
 lower branches of the trees were alive with them. 
 After a little preening, a few conversational notes 
 and an occasional fight with sharp cries and 
 
192 BEACH GRASS 
 
 snapping of bills, these birds ascended to the 
 leafy tree-tops where there was much shifting of 
 positions and animated conversation. Occasion- 
 ally a pair in active fight would come to the 
 ground, but for the most part all the birds after 
 the first, including the newcomers who were ar- 
 riving in numbers, remained in the tree-tops. 
 The din began to diminish at half-past six and 
 at a quarter of seven, the birds were sleeping 
 so soundly that they did not arouse when I left 
 the forest. 
 
 Early in the season the morning chorus from 
 this assembly of robins is full-throated and glo- 
 rious. After the end of July or the first of Aug- 
 ust the morning awakening is destitute, or nearly 
 destitute, of song. Occasionally a single robin 
 makes a feeble attempt to sing. Song is replaced, 
 however, by many conversational notes and a 
 general shifting and fluttering about through the 
 trees as if a gossipy reception was being held be- 
 fore the birds leave for the day. 
 
 The morning awakening, early in September, 
 begins about half-past four and the birds are 
 nearly all gone by five o'clock. Very different 
 
THE FOREST 193 
 
 is the behavior of a small Hock of starlings who 
 also roost in the forest. Not a sound is heard 
 from them until fifteen or twenty minutes after 
 the departure of the robins, when, with a prelim- 
 inary chirp — although I do not always hear this 
 — they are off with a silken swish of wings. 
 
 At night, in walking in the darkness to my cot, 
 I am careful not to hit the tree trunks, for, if I 
 do, I am apt to awaken one or more of the slum- 
 bering robins, and the commotion caused by their 
 alarm notes and fluttering of wings often spreads 
 in all directions like ripples on a pond. On clear 
 moonlight nights occasional conversational notes 
 and a shifting of positions are not uncommon 
 among the birds. 
 
 One June morning at daybreak, I was aroused 
 from my sleep in the forest by a great outcry 
 among the robins who were flying about in a nerv- 
 ous, alarmed manner. A few grackles, red- 
 wings, yellow warblers and chickadees added to 
 the tumult. Later I discovered a short distance 
 from my bed the feathers of a robin that had 
 been eaten by a hawk. The offender in this 
 case was a marsh hawk, who had varied his 
 
194 BEACH GRASS 
 
 usual diet of field-mice. He was certainly a 
 criminal among his race for I have evidence that 
 he has devoured in my forest not only several 
 robins but a grackle and a green heron. I have 
 seen him harrying the forest in the day time pur- 
 sued by most of its inhabitants. 
 
 At times barn swallows to the number of fifty 
 or more have roosted in the forest ajid have 
 caused me infinite joy by their early song of 
 thanksgiving. Few birds sing so charmingly in 
 chorus as does the barn swallow. 
 
 The distant calls of the crow and its varied 
 conversational notes, some of which have a very 
 human quality, and its rattling, crackling "song'' 
 already referred to, are pleasing rural sounds. 
 But I have determined never again to allow this 
 bird to nest in my forest, not only on account of 
 the danger to other birds' eggs and tender nest- 
 lings, but also because the sound of the constant 
 calling of the young for food, a repeated car car 
 car^ is most disturbing to one who is alert for 
 bird songs. Nor is this all, for, when the parent 
 inserts its bill and head into the capacious maw 
 of the youngster in order to feed it, this same 
 
THE FOREST 195 
 
 youngster makes a still more disagreeable gurgling 
 or gargling sound which is but the- prchulc to 
 more cars. Young crows are always calling for 
 more. 
 
 The year following this determination to ex- 
 clude nesting crows, I found the evidence of a 
 crow tragedy in numerous scattered feathers of 
 that bird. It was plain that a hawk or perhaps 
 a great horned owl had relieved me of the job for 
 no nesting crow intruded that year. I trust that 
 the tradition of the dangers of the forest to crows 
 will persist. 
 
 Another bird I do not care to have nest in my 
 forest is that enterprising and intelligent bird, 
 the bronzed grackle. My reasons are the same 
 as in the case of the crow. He is destructive to 
 other birds' eggs and young, and peace-disturbing 
 not only when his own young are calling for 
 food, but even when he himself is singing in his 
 best manner. 
 
 Of late years the grackle has shown his enter- 
 prise and intelligence by taking to nesting in 
 cities and towns and about houses. Prior t() 
 1900 he was rarely to be seen in the Public Gar- 
 
196 BEACH GRASS 
 
 den in Boston, but since that date they have 
 nested there commonly. Not until 1907 did they 
 begin to build nests in the vines of my house, and 
 it soon became a matter of choice between the de- 
 lightful robin or the obnoxious grackle as a 
 housemate. I naturally preferred the former. 
 A nest of a grackle over a back porch that I tore 
 down every week-end for five in succession, 
 was rebuilt and an egg generally laid therein by 
 the next week-end. I then found that if the eggs 
 were taken and the nest left, the birds became 
 suspicious and deserted. Possibly they thought 
 the destruction of the nest was due to the ele- 
 ments while the purloining of the eggs was due to 
 an enemy who would return for more ! The last 
 method of inducing the grackles to change their 
 abode was approved of by my neighbors and, by 
 the aid of a boy, thirty-two fresh grackles' eggs 
 were secured from the vines of several houses. 
 They made an excellent omelet. 
 
 In the last chapter of "Sand Dunes and Salt 
 Marshes" I had something to say of the in- 
 teresting habit acquired by these birds of picking 
 a bit of food from the surface of water like a 
 
 
THE FOREST 197 
 
 gull, sometimes immersing part of the bod) m 
 the act, and I mentioned that I had seen one carry- 
 off what appeared to be a small silver} tish. 
 Since that time I have seen grackles accomplish 
 this feat many times in the Back-Bay Basin of 
 the Charles River, and, with the help of a police- 
 man, I have secured the living fish that they had 
 brought to land. The fish were three-spined 
 sticklebacks. I am sure that an island com- 
 munity of grackles would have nothing to tear 
 from the shrinking of their terrestrial food 
 supply. 
 
 One spring I tied pieces of white rag to a string 
 and stretched it across my garden to protect the 
 sprouting corn from the crows and it was effec- 
 tual. The grackles, however, not only refused to 
 be scared by this device, but one individual 
 actually pulled the string hither and thither over 
 the ground until he succeeded in detaching a piece 
 of rag. With this, croaking hoarsely in triumph, 
 he flew to his nest. Rather than lose the company 
 of this interesting bird I would let him nest on my 
 house and in my forest, but I prefer to have him 
 nest elsewhere. 
 
198 BEACH GRASS 
 
 Not only do I hear birds in my morning wak- 
 ing hours but I see them from my cot. Looking 
 up through the trees early one spring morning 
 I noticed a small bird fluttering among the leaves 
 of the topmost branches of an oak. With my 
 glasses I saw that it was a female Maryland 
 yellow-throat. Presently she hopped out to a 
 bare branch, shook herself as birds do after a 
 bath, puffing out all her feathers which were wet, 
 and I realized that she had been taking a dew- 
 bath in the tree-tops. 
 
 It is possible that this is a common habit among 
 birds, although I have never seen it described. 
 The rustling and fluttering of the awakening 
 robins already mentioned may be the accompany- 
 ing sounds of dew-baths, but robins are such 
 early risers that there is too little light to spy 
 out their matutinal ways. 
 
 Inquisitive chickadees are apt to fly about 
 from branch to branch close at hand, peering 
 at me with their black shining eyes. Catbirds 
 chase insects over the dry leaves, twitching the 
 leaves back of them with their bills, and making 
 the noise of a larger animal. Robins start 
 
THE FOREST 199 
 
 fighting in the tree-tops out of my sight and drop 
 to the ground within my vision. Song sparrows, 
 Maryland yellow-throats and yellow warblers 
 often sing to me within sight but upon my ears 
 I am chiefly dependent for these clinical observa- 
 tions. 
 
 The shy mammal rarely reveals himself in my 
 waking hours in the forest. I have heard foxes 
 barking in the distance and have seen their tracks 
 in the snow sometimes close to the lean-to, and 
 once, from the house I saw a fox trot across the 
 field in early morning and enter the forest. Gray 
 squirrels chase each other from tree to tree and 
 scamper over the dry leaves, cottontail rabbits 
 often play within scope of my vision, I have 
 glimpses of white-footed mice and I have some- 
 times been conscious of the presence of a 
 skunk. 
 
 On awakening one lovely May morning, I was 
 surprised to see a cottontail rabbit bounding into 
 the air as if it were intent on climbing a tree. 
 Then I discovered there were two and that they 
 were playing. One would run at full speed 
 directly at the other, who, as if discharged by 
 
200 BEACH GRASS 
 
 springs, bounced straight up into the air a couple 
 of feet or so and his playmate passed underneath. 
 The merry pair continued to practice this cotton- 
 tail form of leap-frog for several minutes. 
 
 I once saw a deer run out of the forest in the 
 day time. Deer have done grievous injury to the 
 bark of a locust tree, and in the early days of the 
 forest I had to tie rags to a couple of white cedars 
 to prevent their entire consumption by deer. I 
 have not caught a weasel asleep, neither have I 
 seen one from my cot, but on one occasion on the 
 outskirts of the forest I came across a weasel 
 that sat up on end with its little forepaws hang- 
 ing down, and impudently watched me from a 
 distance of fifteen feet. At times it stood erect 
 on its hind feet, at times it squatted on its 
 haunches. It; was a long drawn out animal, 
 brown above, white below, tinged with creamy 
 yellow; the end of its tail was black; its ears 
 were large and its black beedy eyes were fixed 
 upon me. I stood motionless and whistled to 
 it softly. After a few minutes scrutiny it 
 dropped to all fours and bounded off like a 
 dachshund hobby-horse, but returned in a mo- 
 
THE FOREST 201 
 
 ment to again watch the strange whistling crea- 
 ture. 
 
 There are many other sounds than those al- 
 ready detailed that are interesting to one "who 
 is quick to read the voices of the night," 
 such as the wide range of insect sounds. After 
 the middle of August the snowy tree-cricket sings 
 by rubbing his wing-covers together every night 
 until his activities are stilled by the cold of 
 autumn. This point is reached when the ther- 
 mometer sinks to about fifty degrees. It is a 
 regular pulsing, throbbing song in which two or 
 more insects may unite in unison. Thoreau 
 refers to it as "the slumbrous breathing of crickets 
 throughout the night." The hotter the night, 
 the quicker the repetition of the notes, the colder, 
 the slower. By counting the notes in a (juarter 
 of a minute and adding thirty-nine, one obtains 
 the number of degrees of temperature Fahrenheit, 
 with surprising accuracy. This may be called a 
 cricket thermometer. 
 
 The snowy tree-cricket, whose song I have just 
 described, is a very different looking insect from 
 the well-known field-cricket, a first cousin oi the 
 
202 BEACH GRASS 
 
 European species, the familiar ''cricket on the 
 hearth." The field-cricket is dark brown or 
 black, stout and robust in appearance and easily 
 discovered. The snowy tree-cricket is pale 
 greenish white in color, slender and delicately 
 formed. It is practically never seen except by 
 those who make diligent search, as it secretes it- 
 self in bushes and vines, and is apt to cease 
 singing if one intrudes too closely on its 
 haunts. 
 
 On a November night the wind switched 
 around from the south to the northeast, blew hard 
 and brought rain. I was awakened by the rain 
 in my face and the groaning of a tree trunk 
 rubbing against the roof of the lean-to. The 
 sound was so human that I reached out in the 
 darkness to discover if by any chance some one 
 had come to the other bed beside me. 
 
 The soft soughing of the wind in the pines, the 
 rustling of the leaves of the hard woods as their 
 branches sway in the breeze, or the roaring of a 
 gale through the forest are all sounds that give 
 pleasure. Especially do I enjoy the sound of the 
 surf breaking on the beach when an easterly wind 
 
THE FORESr 203 
 
 brings it to my ears, or when it roars loudl\ in 
 a calm night after a storm. 
 
 Even in the absence of beasts or birds, the view 
 from my cot in the lean-to is most satisfying: — 
 the brown forest floor, the clustering tree trunks, 
 the green canopy above and all around dotted here 
 and there with glimpses of sky — a very pleasant 
 and well arranged bed chamber. In front of the 
 lean-to, the ground slopes rapidly down, and here 
 is left a space with trees on either side. Throu;jh 
 this vista I used to be able to look out on the 
 broad marshes and winding creeks, the wooded 
 islands and the distant pine-covered hills, (irad- 
 ually the tree growth narrowed the view and, al- 
 though I lopped oif branches from time to time, 
 the jungle conquered in the end and now my 
 view, even in this direction, is bounded by waving 
 foliage. 
 
 Partly to avoid disturbing the beasts and birds 
 and partly for the sake of the mild adventure, 
 I take no light at night to guide me to the lean-to. 
 The forest path is a sinuous one, some seventy 
 paces long, and winds about among the trees. 
 On moonlight nights the way is clear, but there 
 
204 BEACH GRASS 
 
 are many nights when I am engulfed in Stygian 
 darkness the moment I enter the forest. Partly 
 by the feel of the well trodden path on the fallen 
 leaves and pine needles, and partly by my 
 familiarity with the individual trees and knowl- 
 edge of all the twists and turns of the path, I 
 can generally reach my goal. Sometimes I stray 
 and am temporarily lost. My attitude on the 
 walk is that of a suppliant, with hands extended 
 and clasped lest any sapling steal through my 
 guard and smite me in the face. For the time 
 being I am a blind man and it matters not 
 whether my eyes are shut or open. 
 
 A rain continues in the forest for several hours 
 after the storm has ceased outside. The leaves 
 and branches drip steadily in the calm that fol- 
 lows a storm, and the rain pours down in showers 
 when gusts of wind shake the trees. Just as 
 snow is conserved in the forest and slowly melts 
 and enriches the ground, so is the volume of the 
 rain spread over a longer period and does not rush 
 down the hillsides in a career of waste and 
 destruction. In winter, when the fields are here 
 bare of snow, there piled in great drifts, depend- 
 
THE FORESr 205 
 
 "•n- 
 
 ent on the vargaries of the wind and the irre-u 
 larities of the shelter, my forest is evenly car- 
 peted and built up with snow. When the sprin;^ 
 warmth and showers leave the fields a {)atch- 
 work of sodden and gullied earth and snowdrifts, 
 and finally remove all traces of whiteness, the 
 forest still retains its slowly melting blanket. 
 This at last sinks into the ground without a trace. 
 One of the pleasurable sounds in Nature is 
 that of falling rain. In a house one ma}' be 
 disturbed lest it rain in the windows and injure 
 the ceilings, and, in the city, the prospect out- 
 side is far from inspiring. If, however, one 
 associates with the sound of falling rain the smell 
 of the earth and the crops greedy for the refresh- 
 ing draught, the associated cooling of the air in 
 heated days, and all the glorious and awe-in- 
 spiring manifestations of a storm, the sound be- 
 comes one of the pleasurable sounds of nature. 
 To lie out in a lean-to and listen to the wind sing- 
 ing in the branches, to hear the rain on the root 
 and in the trees, to feel now and then a s{)ra} ot 
 moisture on the cheek is always an interesting 
 experience. 
 
2o6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 What pleasant memories does not the smell 
 of salt marshes bring to mind! It is a char- 
 acteristic odor, a good salty, marshy smell, and it 
 is concentrated in all its agreeable qualities in a 
 rick of damp salt hay. A summer's rain bring 
 it up from the marshes to my lean-to in the forest 
 with especial force. Why this should be so I 
 do not know. Its full flavor is to be found on 
 the borders of the creeks, where one walks in the 
 thatch grass with loud crackling sounds at each 
 tread as the great grass stalks snap under foot. 
 The smell of the flats at low tide is good but it 
 lacks the flavor of salt hay. Flats have an evil 
 reputation, as they are associated in the mind with 
 the flats about the harbors of great cities, contam- 
 inated with sewage and with the waste of gas fac- 
 tories. Flats in primitive regions, washed clean 
 twice in twenty-four hours by the clear green sea 
 water are as different from these as white is from 
 black. 
 
 The sweet odors that float through the four 
 open sides of my lean-to in the forest are always 
 a delight. The delicate and subtle odors of 
 early spring, the smell of the freshly turned 
 
THE FOREST 207 
 
 soil wafted from yonder field, the perfume 
 of the apple blossom, which sometimes per- 
 vades the whole country-side, the odors of 
 the old hawthorne hedge and of the wild 
 cherries at the boundary stone walls, the 
 superlatively sweet odor of the wild grape, of 
 the wild rose and of the new-mown hay, the 
 aromatic smell of pine and spruce and hr, as 
 well as the good smell of the salt marsh, all con- 
 tribute to the pleasures of sense and contempla- 
 tion of one who makes this forest his bed cham- 
 ber. One often strains his nose and his memory 
 to differentiate these odors. 
 
 On the floor of a natural forest an interest- 
 ing assembly of wild flowers is to be found. 
 These forest-loving species are of course absent 
 where a forest is rudely thrust by man into a 
 mowing-field, although, in time, by the agency 
 of wind and birds and beasts, it would un- 
 doubtedly spring up. I have already alluded to 
 my introduction of dog's-tooth violets, blood- 
 root, ferns and other plants, and it is my ambi- 
 tion, as opportunity favors, to make here a collec- 
 tion of forest-loving species that will add greatly 
 
2o8 BEACH GFIASS 
 
 to the beauty and interest of my forest, which 
 will be as an open book. What better way to 
 learn the ferns, for example, than by collecting 
 and introducing as many different kinds as possi- 
 ble and watching them as they become established. 
 Fortunately the character of the ground varies 
 from dry gravel to clay subsoil, and to spring}^ 
 ground at the foot of the hill near the salt marsh. 
 I already have a few lady's slippers and rattle- 
 snake plantains in my forest. The possibility of 
 a considerable collection of wild flowers there as 
 well as of ferns is an inspiring thought. 
 
 An unexpected source of profit and pleasure 
 ensued from the forest. When I planted and 
 tenderly brooded over the delicate seedlings on 
 the hillside, the use of an axe on them was far 
 from my thoughts. Yet a time came when an 
 axe was very necessary. I had planted them near 
 together for protection from the rough winds. 
 Many of them were nurses, and it is well to elim- 
 inate nurses when the child outgrows the apron- 
 strings. Elms and ashes had been sprinkled in 
 liberally, but, although I was glad to grow a 
 thicket for birds, I found these nurses were push- 
 
THE FOREST 209 
 
 ing and shading some of my rarer trees and that 
 they would eventually kill them. Hence the 
 need of the axe, although it required a steeling 
 of the heart to destroy what I had nurtured from 
 their infancy. I could still keep a thicket for 
 birds even with liberal cutting and my thicket 
 would contain a greater variety of trees. 
 
 The wielding of the axe as an exercise has 
 many advantages. Personally I prefer it to the 
 wielding of a golf club. It is at its best in mid- 
 winter when golf is often impossible. It re- 
 quires much skill and quickness of eye. My 
 first stumps looked like beaver stumps. The 
 felling of the tree in the desired direction, the 
 loping off of the limbs, the cutting up of the large 
 part of the trunk into fireplace wood, and of the 
 small part into stove wood, the pushing of the 
 load in a wheelbarrow up to the house or the 
 dragging it on a sled on the snow, the gathering 
 and burning of the brush — all of these in the 
 cold sparkling days of autumn and winter are 
 joys that make life worth living and keep a man 
 in good physical condition. There is no better 
 exercise. 
 
210 BEACH GRASS 
 
 There were no towering forest trees to be cut 
 down in my youthful forest, and, with the excep- 
 tion of a few old wild cherry trees on my bound- 
 ary walls that I cut down to make room for other 
 trees, I guarded my old trees most zealously. 
 Wind and storm, however, played havoc with a 
 few of these veterans and gave me opportunities 
 to cut up the large boles with the help of a friend 
 and a two handled saw, and to split the pieces 
 with iron wedges and a sledge hammer. Sawing 
 is monotonous work, and unless the trunk or 
 limb is too large the axe is to be preferred even 
 if it take longer and be more wasteful. The 
 saw requires no skill in its use, each drawing back 
 and forth is the same as the one preceding. Each 
 stroke of the axe, on the other hand, must be in- 
 telligently placed to get the best results. Two 
 in succession are rarely the same. One stroke 
 cuts diagonally, another cuts straight across the 
 grain; the fragrant white chips fly the steel rings 
 out. Swinging a heavy sledge hammer is also 
 splendid exercise. A splitting and tearing of the 
 wood occurs, clean fresh surfaces open up and 
 a sweet smell issues forth. During the Great 
 
THE FOREST 
 
 211 
 
 War when it was a patriotic duty to conserve coal 
 for our allies, I was able to keep the house sup- 
 plied with wood. 
 
 Every farm should have a wood-lot, and if it 
 does not possess one, let not the owner delay to 
 plant it. Rightly used it is a source of much 
 pleasure and profit. 
 
 "When ye hae naething else to do, 
 
 ye may be aye sticking in a tree. It "will 
 
 he growing when ye' re sleeping,'' 
 
 List of Trees 
 
 Larch 
 
 White Pine 
 Pitch Pine 
 Banksian Pine 
 Red Pine 
 Black Spruce 
 Red Spruce 
 White Spruce" 
 Hemlock 
 Balsam Fir 
 
 IN Forest and Adjoining 
 Land 
 
 Arbor vitae 
 White Cedar 
 Red Cedar 
 Aspen poplar 
 White Willow 
 Butternut 
 Black Walnut 
 Bitternut Hickory 
 Hop Hornbeam 
 Hornbeam 
 
212 BEACH 
 
 Sweet Birch 
 
 Yellow Birch 
 
 White or Gray Birch 
 
 Canoe Birch 
 
 Beech 
 
 Chestnut 
 
 White Oak 
 
 Bur Oak 
 
 Swamp White Oak 
 
 Chestnut Oak 
 
 Red Oak 
 
 Scarlet Oak 
 
 American Elm 
 
 Hackberry 
 
 Tulip Tree 
 
 Sassafras 
 
 Buttonwood 
 
 Mountain Ash 
 
 GRASS 
 
 Wild Red Cherry 
 
 Chokecherry 
 
 Wild Black Cherry 
 
 Locust 
 
 Clammy Locust 
 
 Red Maple 
 
 White Maple 
 
 Sugar Maple 
 
 Mountain Maple 
 
 Striped Maple 
 
 Ash-leaved Maple 
 
 Linden 
 
 Flowering Dogwood 
 
 Tupelo 
 
 Red Ash 
 
 White Ash 
 
 Green Ash 
 
 Bushes and Vines 
 
 Shadbush 
 Thorn 
 
 Staghorn Sumach 
 Smooth Sumach 
 
 Red Osier 
 Hobble-bush 
 Arrow-wood Viburnum 
 Maple-leaf Viburnum 
 
Sweet Viburnum 
 
 Wythe-rod Viburnum 
 
 Hazel 
 
 Barberry 
 
 Beach Plum 
 
 Bayberry 
 
 Winterberry 
 
 Alder 
 
 Witch Hazel 
 
 Elder 
 
 Rhodora 
 
 Meadowsweet 
 
 Hardback 
 
 THE FOREST 
 
 High Blackberry 
 Wild Rose 
 Wild Gooseberry 
 Low Juniper 
 Yew 
 
 Poison Ivy 
 Fox Grape 
 Frost Grape 
 Bitter-Sweet 
 Groundnut 
 Trumpet Creeper 
 Woodbine 
 
 213 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Swallows at Work and Play 
 
 'Who but the swallow triumphs now alone? 
 The canopy of heav'n is all her own 
 Her youthful offspring to their haunts repair^ 
 And glide along in glades and skim the air^ 
 And dip for insects in the purling springs. 
 And stoop on rivers to refresh their wings'' 
 
 — Dry den 
 
 B 
 
 OTH the tree swallow and barn swallow 
 have modified their nesting habits since 
 the arrival of the white man in America. 
 The tree swallow formerly built its nest in trees 
 hollowed by decay or in woodpeckers' nesting 
 holes. This habit is still continued wherever 
 suitable holes are to be found, even in such a 
 thickly populated region as Essex County, but 
 the majority of the nests that come to our at- 
 tention are built in boxes or houses of various 
 designs that are erected for their especial con- 
 venience. 
 
 214 
 
AT WORK AND PLAY 215 
 
 On my twelve acre farm at Ipswich I have 
 had fifteen pairs building in boxes in one season. 
 One of these boxes, which has been occupied each 
 year for over twenty years, violates most of the 
 rules laid down in modern books for the building 
 of bird-houses. It is advised, and with good 
 reason, that paint should not be used, that the 
 opening should be no larger than the bird's body, 
 that it should be circular, several inches above 
 the bottom of the box and that the nesting mate- 
 rial be removed at the end of every season. Now 
 this favored house of mine is painted red with 
 black windows and green blinds, has a large rec- 
 tangular opening on a level with the floor, and, 
 being on the top of a pole, is never cleaned out. 
 This only goes to show that the tree swallow is 
 an adaptive bird. My experience demonstrates 
 that square wooden boxes are just as popular as 
 the most carefully made and expensive von 
 Berlepsch boxes, which may be heresy. 
 
 The barn swallow formerly built its mud and 
 straw nests in rocky caves. Swallow Cave at 
 Nahant is an instance, but as far as I know no 
 barn swallow has been found within fifty years 
 
2i6 BEACH GRASS 
 
 building in a natural cave in Essex County. It 
 nests in artificial caves made by the white man, 
 in out-buildings and, above all, in barns. 
 
 What is more charming than an ancient barn 
 filled with the sweet scent of hay and the song of 
 the barn swallows! The doors stand open, the 
 windows have many gaps in their frames. 
 Through these inviting openings the swallows are 
 constantly gliding. I have known many such 
 barns but of one that I know intimately at Ipswich 
 I would speak here. Not only did barn swallows 
 nest in large numbers in its cavernous interior but 
 a large colony of eave swallows built their retort- 
 shaped nests under its liberal eaves. I once 
 counted on the beams and rafters of this barn 
 fifty-five barn swallows' nests. These are made 
 of globules of gray mud brought by the birds in 
 their bills, firmly plastered together and mixed 
 with straw. They are lined with hay and 
 feathers. In late June and in July one may lie 
 in the fragrant hay and listen to a concert of 
 great beauty and watch a scene constantly chang- 
 ing and full of interest. The old birds are ever 
 flying in and out, skimming close to the floor or 
 
AT WORK AND PLAY 217 
 
 just missing the top of the door or window frame, 
 skillfully dodging any human being that may be 
 standing in the doorway and never pausing for 
 an instant in the swiftness of their flight. They 
 cling to the old beams or to the edge of the nest 
 where they are opposed by a row of four or five 
 pinkish yellow mouths which form conspicuous 
 targets for the discharge of mouthfuls of insects. 
 All the young twitter excitedly, but all those 
 which are unfed as well as the lucky one or two 
 that are fed, quickly subside as soon as the parent 
 goes, and the yellow commisures of their mouths 
 alone are seen in the twilight of the rafters. 
 Sometimes both parents arrive with food at the 
 nest at the same time and the consequent excite- 
 ment is doubled. 
 
 The song of the barn swallow is rarely men- 
 tioned in the books. One reads of their twitter- 
 ing calls from the air or the barn roof. To my 
 mind the barn swallow is one of our most de- 
 lightful singers. His song is always full of 
 charm, soft and lovely, devoid of all roughness. 
 Besides delivering an individual song, he delights 
 in singing in chorus. It is a sweet and cheerful 
 
2i8 BEACH GRASS 
 
 song full of little trills and joyful bubbles of 
 music, at times clear and sparkling, at times ooz- 
 ing and rubbery. Like the music of a brook it 
 flows on indefinitely. At times the old barn is 
 permeated with its melody. Swallows on every 
 rafter and in every cranny and coursing through 
 the air seem filled with the most intense joy of 
 the music. Then all is silent except for the twit- 
 tering of the young; anon the song bursts forth 
 again and swells into a louder chorus and dwin- 
 dles into a soft, low air as if a master leader were 
 swinging his baton. 
 
 Not only do the swallows sing thus in the 
 barns, but as they course the fields or skim the 
 ponds, and perhaps best of all when a group of 
 them welcome the morning sun from a roofside. 
 Our barn swallow is an accomplished singer, and, 
 as a proof that he delights in his own song, he 
 does not limit it to the courtship season but con- 
 tinues it through the arduous time of the rearing 
 of the young and even after the young have left 
 the nest and are abroad. From the first day of 
 his arrival in late April till the end of August 
 and even into September this charming bird sings. 
 
AT WORK AND PLAY 219 
 
 Very few birds have such a long and continuous 
 song season. 
 
 The tree swallow is far inferior in voice to 
 his cousin the barn swallow. In fact, it is the 
 common belief that he has no song, and there 
 would be full excuse for the belief. Such, how- 
 ever, is not the fact. He is our earliest bird to 
 regularly welcome the dawn by song, even an- 
 ticipating the robin. The tree swallows' song, 
 for such it must be called, is a rather monotonous 
 and rather labored repetition of rolling or war- 
 bling notes. Every third or fourth is sharper and 
 shorter, and at times the notes may possibly be 
 called melodious. Its association, however, makes 
 it a pleasing song especially when the notes 
 shower down from a multitude of throats in the 
 dim light of dawn. 
 
 This last season a pair of tree swallows reared 
 a brood of young in a nesting box on the outside 
 of a porch on my Ipswich house, and a pair of 
 barn swallows nested and successfully reared 
 five young on top of a pillar under the same porch, 
 so that I was able to observe and compare the 
 habits of these two species. I have no intention 
 
220 BEACH GRASS 
 
 of giving statistics as to the number of times the 
 young were fed per hour, or to calculate the 
 number of insects devoured — indeed I made no 
 notes of these important but rather dull facts — 
 but I would call attention to two very fundamen- 
 tal differences in the nesting habits of two such 
 similar birds. 
 
 When the broods were young, the parents of 
 both species diligently removed the white sacs of 
 dejecta and dropped them at a distance, as is the 
 common habit of passerine birds. The habit was 
 continued during the entire residence of the 
 young tree swallows in their nest, but only while 
 the barn swallows were small. When the latter 
 had attained nearly adult stature and for several 
 days before they flew, they discharged their de- 
 jecta over the edge of the nest, whitening the 
 piazza floor below, but leaving the nest unsoiled. 
 In both cases the nest sanitation was perfect. 
 
 The second difference in habit between the 
 two species is of considerable interest. The tree 
 swallow brood once launched into the world 
 was lost. As far as I know it did not again oc- 
 cupy its birthplace that season. Not so the barn 
 
AT WORK AND PLAY 221 
 
 swallow. For several days before they left the 
 nest the five young birds seemed fully grown and 
 fully feathered. The chief difference between 
 them and their parents was the fact that they 
 lacked the long outer feathers of the tail. The 
 five heads and necks with their neat brown throat- 
 bibs presented a charming appearance, extending 
 in a row over the edge of the nest. Their shin- 
 ing black eyes looked at me unafraid. When a 
 parent appeared, all their yellow mouths flew 
 open in eager expectancy and all twittered be- 
 seechingly. Usually only one, sometimes two, 
 were rewarded by a mouthful of insect food. A 
 day arrived when the parents flew under the porch 
 back and forth close to the nest as if to entice 
 the young birds, but not feeding them. Several 
 of their friends joined them, for at times there 
 were four or even five birds flying before the 
 gallery of the young. 
 
 The next day there were only three birds in the 
 nest after the early morning, but the two wan- 
 derers returned at sunset. On the following day 
 all five flew off at eight in the morning. At times 
 they rested in trees and were fed by the parents, 
 
222 BEACH GRASS 
 
 sometimes they were fed in mid-air, but doubt- 
 less they did some insect catching on their own 
 hook. At six o'clock they were all back in the 
 nest and being fed by the parents. For four days 
 more this was repeated. The young left in the 
 morning but returned to the nest at night, gen- 
 erally going and coming together. On the fifth 
 night only two returned and after that they oc- 
 cupied the nest no more. I imagined I saw the 
 family party several times, however, as a group 
 of six or seven barn swallows flew past, and oc- 
 casionally they would fly around under the porch, 
 the adults pouring forth their souls in song. This 
 use of the nest by the young as a sleeping place 
 is interesting. Most birds when they fly the 
 nest do not return. 
 
 In "Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes" I de- 
 scribed in some detail the roosting and migration 
 habits of our swallows. Here I will say some- 
 thing of their play. Swallows are social birds. 
 Not only does each associate with its own species, 
 but all four species, the barn, tree, eave, and bank 
 swallows are often found in the same assembly, 
 gathered together for roosting, migrating, feeding 
 
AT WORK AND PLAY 223 
 
 or play. Their enjoyment in their perfect mas- 
 tery of the air is very evident. They fly not 
 only for the purpose of getting food but for the 
 pleasure of flying, chasing each other back and 
 forth, skimming trees and buildings and even 
 human beings by hairs' breaths. One of the best 
 places to watch this social sport of flying is at a 
 pond. By far the majority of the birds with us 
 are tree swallows but a moderate number of barn 
 swallows and a few eave and bank swallows may 
 be seen. One September day at sunset a flock of 
 many hundreds if not thousands of these birds 
 were alighted on the bushes, fence rails and wires 
 near the waters of Sagamore Pond. They arose 
 with the roar of many wings, and, turning first 
 their dark then their white surfaces to the ob- 
 server, swirled about in irregular groups. Then 
 they all flew close to the water, and every now and 
 then hurled themselves at it so that the quiet sur- 
 face of the pond was pitted with splashes as from 
 a bombardment. Their heads, backs and wings 
 were soused in the water, which they shook off in 
 showers as they arose. At times they would dip 
 lightly several times in succession. At last they 
 
224 BEACH GRASS 
 
 all rose high in the air and turned in the direc- 
 tion of their night roost, but the temptation to 
 stay up a little longer and renew their play and 
 the fun of the bath was too great and they re- 
 turned and again bombarded the water. Finally, 
 when the whole sky was suffused with an orange 
 glow, deepening to crimson, they tore them- 
 selves away from their sport, rose to a great 
 height and in open ranks made off directly for 
 their roost in the dunes. 
 
 On a dull May day with an easterly gale 
 bringing in sea mist. Sagamore Pond was covered 
 with swallows — all four species, tree, barn, eave 
 and bank in order of abundance. As one stood 
 on the shore and looked out on the bewildering 
 throng, one could recognize the calls of all the 
 species. They were all fiying within a foot of 
 the water into the teeth of the gale, occasion- 
 ally setting their wings and soaring and occasion- 
 ally dipping in the water below. Arrived at the 
 easterly shore of the pond, they ascended a few 
 yards, turned and glided down wind with great 
 rapidity, only to turn again and begin their slow 
 progress back. It reminded one of a lot of chil- 
 
AT WORK AND PLAY 225 
 
 dren sliding down hill and laboriously dragging 
 their sleds back again. 
 
 On a June morning I came upon a flock of 
 fifty barn swallows sitting on a wire fence, each 
 singing his song of gladness. In an instant all 
 were fluttering head to the wind over the butter- 
 cups and daisies; then all alighted in the grass 
 and dabbed at insects. The morning was so cold 
 that the insects were not on the wing, but 
 quiet and dormant. 
 
 On another cold morning in September I en- 
 tered a meadow white with Queen Anne's lace 
 and spotted with fluttering, twittering tree swal- 
 lows, a half thousand of them at a moderate es- 
 timate. They were flying down to leeward and 
 slowly flying back through the grass picking up 
 insects as they went. Occasionally they became 
 entangled in the grass and flowers and struggled 
 to extricate themselves. The gentle snap, snap 
 of their bills could be heard as they flew within 
 a few feet or even inches of me. 
 
 Tree swallows and barn swallows are both 
 very fearless of man, or perhaps one should say 
 trustful and confiding. On a rainy or cold day 
 
226 BEACH GRASS 
 
 when insects are sluggish, if one walks through a 
 meadow these delightful birds will circle close by 
 to seize the insects put up from the grass. 
 
 It is probable that both the spirit of play and 
 the pursuit of insects are combined in these dis- 
 plays of swallow activity, but at times it seems as 
 if play were the over-ruling factor. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Hawking 
 
 ''True to the season, o'er our sea-boat shore. 
 The sailing osprey high is seen to soar. 
 With broad unmoving wing, and circling slow, 
 Marks each loose straggler in the deep below; 
 Sweeps down like lightning! plunges with a roar! 
 And bears his struggling victim to the shored 
 
 — Alexander Wilson 
 
 LET no one suppose I am writing here of 
 that most ancient of sports — falconr> or 
 hawking — in the sense that is usually in- 
 tended, a sport that consists in the pursuit of game 
 by trained and captive hawks. In the ruins of 
 Ninevah a bas-relief has been found representing a 
 falconer bearing a hawk on his wrist. In England 
 hawking has been pursued from the earliest times, 
 and, although its height of popularity was proba- 
 bly reached during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 yet it still exists, as a sport there today as is at- 
 
 227 
 
228 BEACH GRASS 
 
 tested by the numerous clubs devoted to its pur- 
 suit. The two hawks generally used in this sport 
 in England are the peregrine falcon and the spar- 
 row hawk. The former is the same as our duck 
 hawk with only a slight subspecihc difference, 
 while the latter is an accipiter like our sharp- 
 shinned and our Cooper's hawk and is midway in 
 size between them. By our unscientific early col- 
 onists, our sparrow hawk was given the name it 
 bears, although it is a falcon and not an accipiter 
 like the British bird. It should have been called 
 the kestrel. 
 
 Now it is one form of sport to train the captive 
 hawk for killing, to blind it with a hood and to 
 starve it so that it is keen to strike its chosen vic- 
 tim, and a very different sport to watch the wild 
 bird enjoying its freedom, its glorious powers of 
 flight and of soaring and gliding, with its mar- 
 velous mastery of air currents, and, at rare and 
 most exciting intervals, to see it strike its prey. 
 Another attribute of this form of hawking that I 
 am here extolling is the intellectual pleasure to 
 be obtained from the recognition of the hawk — 
 the diagnosis of the species. 
 
HAWKING 229 
 
 This intellectual pleasure deserves high rank. 
 It is true that one's aesthetic sense may be grat- 
 ified and one may receive great enjoyment from 
 birds and flowers without knowledge of their 
 structure or names. But on the other hand it is 
 not true that a study of structure and the rec- 
 ognition of the species in the field is a detriment 
 to the pure enjoyment of these wonderful crea- 
 tures of nature. The musician who understands 
 the musical composition of a symphony and 
 whose ear is attuned to all its finer points, re- 
 ceives at a concert infinitely more pleasure than 
 one who is ignorant of these matters. One who 
 has studied flowers and birds and is able to dis- 
 tinguish the exact- kind and the significance of 
 form and markings, sees far more of their beauty 
 than one not so trained and he obtains correspond- 
 ingly more enjoyment. The untrained observer 
 often fails to see the bird or flower at all, and if 
 it is called to his attention, sees it but imperfectly. 
 The enjoyment shown by naturalists — and I re- 
 fer to the out-of-doors and not to the closet 
 type — is evidenced in their writings. Wilson, 
 Audubon, Darwin and Wallace, Gilbert 
 
230 BEACH GRASS 
 
 White and Hudson are conspicuous examples. 
 I am sure, although it is heresy to say so, Thoreau 
 would have had more pleasure from his studies 
 of out-of-doors and would have given the world 
 more pleasure, if he had been willing to study 
 more closely and identify more carefully birds 
 and flowers. 
 
 We are fortunate in having in this part of 
 the world a number of different hawks that one 
 may see from time to time — a good baker's 
 dozen of them — and several are fairly common. 
 In England hawks of all kinds, good and bad — 
 and most of them are in reality good as they prey 
 on mice and insects — are all looked upon as "ver- 
 min" and shot at sight. The noble sport of 
 pheasant raising and pheasant slaughter must not 
 be interfered with, or even its nerves offended. 
 There is great danger that this dreadful contagion 
 will spread to our shores by the introduction of 
 the pheasant and the English game-keeper. It is 
 impossible to change the fixed ideas on vermin of 
 the latter species. 
 
 Hudson beautifully expressed the joy to be 
 found in the contemplation of the soaring hawk 
 
HAWKING 231 
 
 and his destestation of its extermination in 
 England. He says: "For who that has ever 
 looked at nature in other regions, where this per- 
 petual hideous war of extermination against all 
 noble feathered life is not carried on, does not 
 miss the great soaring bird in the scene — eagle, or 
 vulture, or buzzard, or kite, or harrier — floating at 
 ease on broad vans, or rising heavenwards in vast 
 and ever vaster circles'? That is the one object in 
 nature which has the effect of widening the pros- 
 pect just as if the spectator had himself been mi- 
 raculously raised to a greater altitude, while at 
 the same time the blue dome of the sky appears 
 to be lifted to an immeasurable height above 
 him. The soaring figure reveals to sight and 
 mind the immensity and glory of the visible 
 world. Without it the blue sky can never seem 
 sublime. But the great soaring bird is nowhere 
 in our lonely sky, and missing it we remember the 
 reason of its absence and realize what the modern 
 craze for the artificially reared pheasant has cost 
 us." 
 
 Far off in the distant sky a great bird is soar- 
 ing on nearly motionless wings. Again he is 
 
232 BEACH GRASS 
 
 poised like a kite over the brow of yonder hill. 
 Nearer at hand a lithe and graceful creature is 
 flying close to the open ground, patiently quar- 
 tering the whole field. Again one may see a 
 hawk slinking along, alternately gliding and flap- 
 ping by copse and hedge, fearlessly passing 
 within a few yards of the human observer. Again 
 a small hawk with pointed wings is hovering over 
 a grassy pasture and drops at frequent intervals 
 to the ground, or a larger bird, built on the same 
 plan suddenly darts like a winged arrow and 
 spreads devastation among a flock of terrified 
 shore birds. It is rarely the case that one is able 
 to make out the markings of these birds. In the 
 distance they are dark objects silhouetted against 
 the sky, and near at hand their velocity of flight 
 and the excitement that their sudden apparition 
 creates, not only in the birds but in the bird- 
 watcher, makes the careful study of markings 
 difficult. On these accounts many observers, 
 keen and accurate enough in the case of other 
 birds are often in despair with the identification 
 of hawks, and their despair is increased by the 
 fact that most artificial keys in the books dwell 
 
HAWKING 23^ 
 
 chiefly on the markings that they fail to see. For 
 example one of the best recent handbooks gives a 
 key for field identification in which the presence 
 or absence of cross-bars on the under parts are 
 cardinal points ! 
 
 With the exception of the marsh hawk, the 
 bald eagle and the fish hawk or osprey — all of 
 which are easily recognized — the hawks of this re- 
 gion in particular and of Northeastern America 
 in general fall into three groups : viz, the falcons, 
 the buteos and the accipiters. These groups are 
 fundamental, easily identified, and, if once 
 learned, the key to the hawks is within reach. 
 
 The falcons can be distinguished by their long, 
 narrow, pointed wings that reach nearly to the 
 end of their long tails when at rest, and by their 
 swift and graceful flight. The buteos are dis- 
 tinguished by their broad wings, their short tails 
 and their frequent habit of soaring in circles. 
 The accipiters are distinguished by their short, 
 broad wings which reach only to the base of their 
 long tails, and by their habit of alternately sail- 
 ing and flapping in flight. 
 
 Tn order to show at a glance the difference in 
 
234 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the shape of these three classes of hawks in the 
 flight, as we most frequently see them silhouetted 
 against the sky, I have drawn the outline of a 
 freshly killed hawk from each class with wings 
 extended. These outlines were then reduced to 
 one eighth of life size, so that they could be used 
 as an illustration. Under each figure is printed 
 the name of the hawk chosen and beside each the 
 names of the other hawks in the same group. 
 
 A study of the diagrams with the brief de- 
 scription already given should enable one to dis- 
 tinguish a falcon, a buteo or an accipiter. Of our 
 falcons the smallest is the sparrow hawk, next 
 the pigeon hawk while the largest is the duck 
 hawk or peregrine falcon, while the rare gyrfal- 
 cons of the north are larger still. 
 
 The sparrow hawk is a confiding little bird, 
 and often nests in holes in old apple-trees close 
 to houses. He frequently alights on telegraph 
 poles where he waves his tail up and down, and 
 flies from pole to pole ahead of the wayfarer 
 leading him on. Seen at close range, as is often 
 the case, the striking face markings and the rich 
 foxy brown back make his recognition easy. He 
 
FIGURE I 
 
 FALCONS 
 
 SPARROW HAWK 
 PIUEON HAWK 
 
 WHITE aVRPALCON 
 BLACK GYRFALCON 
 
 DUCK HAWK 
 FIGURE II 
 
 BUTfOS 
 
 REO-SHOULDEREDHAWK 
 BRPAD-WINaeDHAWK 
 
 ROUCHLE&aEDHAWK 
 
 RED-TAILED HAWK 
 FIGURE III 
 
 CO 5 HAWK 
 
 OOPERiHAWK 
 
 SHAR$>-5HINN£D HAWK 
 
 OUTLINE DRAWINGS OF HAWKS 
 
HAWKING 235 
 
 has a habit of hovering a few feet above the grass 
 and pouncing down at grasshoppers and crickets. 
 The pigeon hawk is a little larger, has broader 
 shoulders and is dark blue above, while the duck 
 hawk is a much larger falcon and has markings 
 like black mustachios. He has a dashing way 
 with him. I was watching a flock of grass birds 
 in the salt marsh w^hen a duck hawk suddenly ap- 
 peared, struck one of them dead within thirty 
 yards of me, passed on in its impetuous flight, 
 but, swinging about, seized the dead bird in its 
 talons and was off. The whole thing was done 
 in the twinkling of an eye so that it was difficult 
 to realize what had happened. This is the habit 
 of the duck hawk or the peregrine falcon, a quick 
 rush or ''stoop" in the language of the hawker, a 
 strike in passing, which kills, and a return to bear 
 off the prey. The strike is almost always on a 
 bird awing. Ducks evince the greatest terror 
 when this falcon dashes in amongst a flying flock. 
 Not so when they are swimming on the water. 
 One December day I saw a splendid duck hawk 
 fly out from the dunes and scale over a flock of 
 scoter ducks on the ocean. It then turned about 
 
236 BEACH GRASS 
 
 and disappeared among the dunes. The ducks 
 appeared not a whit disturbed and paid no atten- 
 tion to their very transient visitor. 
 
 Of the buteos, the smallest is the broad-winged 
 hawk, much larger is the red-shouldered hawk, 
 next in grandeur the red-tailed hawk, while the 
 rough-legged is the largest of all, nearly as large 
 as an eagle. The broad-winged is about the 
 size of a crow and usually very unsuspicious so 
 that its recognition is an easy one. One may 
 often hear its distinctive cry, a mournful double 
 whistle suggestive of the call of the wood pewee. 
 
 A large buteo soaring in the distance should be 
 examined carefully with the glasses. If it is an 
 adult red-tailed hawk the foxy-red color of the 
 tail seen from either above or below will 
 flash at times, as the light strikes it, and will pro- 
 claim its identity. This species is a trifle larger 
 than the red-shouldered hawk, but the difference 
 in size without actual comparison is of little value 
 for identification. If the tail is not red, it is 
 either an immature red-tailed hawk or a red- 
 shouldered hawk. In the latter bird the russet 
 brown shoulders can be seen only under the most 
 
HAWKING 237 
 
 favorable conditions. Its scream is a familiar 
 one, as it is frequently imitated by the blue jay, 
 while the red-tailed hawk's scream is strongly 
 suggestive of the sound of escaping steam. 
 
 The rough-legged hawk comes to us in winter 
 from Labrador. He is a magnificent bird, and, 
 in his dark phase, is as black as a crow and as de- 
 void of markings. In the light phase he has a 
 white rump or base of the tail and often a black 
 band across the lower chest. The flight of the 
 rough-leg is graceful and indicative of skill and 
 power. On motionless wings, if the wind be 
 favorable, he often soars high in the blue vault 
 of the sky, a picture long to be treasured. The 
 wings and tail are extended to the full, the first 
 half-dozen quills spread out separately and curved 
 upwards at their tips from the air pressure. 
 
 Sometimes, when not too high, the bird may 
 be seen to look down, to lower its long feathered 
 legs from under the tail, where all hawks carr) 
 them in flight, to partially close its wings, and to 
 drop like a plummet on the prey, which its keen 
 vision has singled out. After one of these de- 
 scents the bird I was watching flew ofF with a 
 
238 BEACH GRASS 
 
 large mouse, after another with a cottontail rab- 
 bit. It is one of our most beneficial hawks and, 
 like all the buteos, which, alas, are ignorantly 
 classed as "hen hawks," almost never touches a 
 feather. 
 
 I shall never forget an incident which proved 
 the beneficial character of one of this species to 
 an English game-keeper who was imbued with 
 the belief that all hawks are noxious vermin. 
 It was at the heath hen reservation at Marthas 
 Vineyard and the keeper in question had killed 
 a rough-legged hawk which, from its size, he had 
 deemed the arch enemy of his flock. The stomach 
 of his victim was distended to its full capacity, 
 and maintaining my expectation of mice, I opened 
 it before him. Instead of finding, as the keeper 
 had predicted, young heath hens within, we found 
 the stomach stuffed with the fur and bones of 
 field-mice: not a feather was to be found. My 
 triumph was complete and the reputation of the 
 hawk was saved, but I doubt if it disturbed the 
 keeper's belief. 
 
 Of the accipitrine group, the smallest is the 
 sharp-shinned hawk, next larger the Cooper's 
 
HAWKING 239 
 
 hawk, while the largest of all is the goshawk. 
 It is to be remembered that male hawks are 
 smaller, sometimes a third smaller than the 
 females, a fact that is brought out in the lan- 
 guage of falconry where the male hawks are 
 called tiercels^ corrupted to tercels and tassels. 
 A female sharp-shinned hawk may be nearly as 
 large as a male Cooper's hawk. The sha{)e of 
 the ends of the tails in these two hawks is the 
 important point; in the sharp-shinned it is square- 
 cut, in the Cooper's it is rounded like a coop — 
 an easy mnemonic. 
 
 The immature goshawk is larger than a 
 Cooper's hawk but resembles it in form and 
 coloration. The adult goshawk, however, is 
 noticeable by reason of its slaty gray back, black 
 top to the head and black cheek patch, and by 
 the fine barring on the white under parts. 
 
 The accipiters soar at times but their usual 
 and characteristic flight is a succession of flutters 
 and sails, of wing flappings and glidings. They 
 steal along by copse and hedge-row or boldly en- 
 ter the chicken-yard and strike terror wherever 
 they go. They are true chicken hawks and small 
 
240 BEACH GRASS 
 
 bird murderers. They are the farmer's enemy. 
 Unlike the peregrine falcon, the accipiters do 
 not strike their prey on the wing a killing stroke 
 with the foot and then return to pick them up, 
 but they pounce upon them as a rule on the ground 
 or a perch, and, thrusting their talons deep, 
 "truss" them in the language of falconry and 
 crush out their life. 
 
 There are three other hawks that may be seen 
 in northeastern America — the marsh hawk the 
 bald eagle and the fish hawk or osprey. 
 
 The marsh hawk is our commonest hawk and is 
 often to be seen flying over marsh or dune or up- 
 land pasture. He is a harrier like the English 
 harrier and carefully quarters the ground, flying 
 and sailing back and forth within a few yards of it 
 in his search for mice and other small vermin. 
 It must be confessed that he occasionally captures 
 a bird and that some individuals are notorious 
 offenders in that direction, but the species as a 
 whole is one of the farmer's friends. His habit 
 of flight, his long wings and tail and, most marked 
 of all, his snow-white rump makes recognition 
 easy. The only other hawk with a white rump 
 
HAWKING 241 
 
 is the very much larger and heavier rough-legged 
 hawk already described, a bird of a different 
 build. The general coloration of the marsh 
 hawk varies from a beautiful rufous brown in 
 the female and immature to a light pearl blue in 
 the adult male. 
 
 A huge bird with snow-white head and tail is 
 none other than a bald eagle, but, as the im- 
 mature birds lack the white and are uniform 
 brown in color, one is obliged in their case to de- 
 pend on the great size and general appearance. 
 The fish hawk or osprey is easily recognized as it 
 is the only large hawk that is dark above and 
 white below. With glasses one can generally 
 make out the white line over the eye. If it indul- 
 ges in its usual spectacular occupation of hovering 
 over the water, and dropping with a splash, a child 
 of three may identify it. If the plunge is suc- 
 cessful, the fish is born aloft and carried in the 
 talons with head pointing forward. 
 
 All hawks may delight the eye by soaring in 
 circles, sometimes to such a great height that 
 they are mere specks in the sky. Sometimes they 
 flap their wings at certain parts of the circle. 
 
242 BEACH GRASS 
 
 but at other times their wings appear motionless 
 save for slight adjustments from time to time, 
 yet in a mysterious way the great birds rise higher 
 and higher. How can these things be? How 
 can a bird defy gravity and sail upwards without 
 muscular effort on its part other than the great 
 strength needed to keep its wings ext€nded'? 
 
 Watch a hawk or a gull or a pigeon gliding on 
 outstretched wings in its descent towards the 
 ground. Is it not evident that if the wind, into 
 which it generally glides should be deflected up- 
 wards, the glide could be continued in the same 
 horizontal plane or turned even slightly upwards'? 
 Such indeed is often the case. Watch an aero- 
 plane with engine shut off gliding against a wind 
 to a landing. How slowly it approaches the 
 earth! and we are told by aviators that if an in- 
 equality in the ground causes an upward deflec- 
 tion of the wind that the descent is even more 
 gradual. One does not need to be an aviator 
 to understand these things.^ 
 
 ^ Since this was written there have been some remarkable 
 instances of human gliding and soaring, dependent on the 
 use of up-currents. These confirm the statement I have 
 made that "there is no mystery about it" 
 
HAWKING 24^ 
 
 It is evident that the soaring hawk, much more 
 lightly build than the aeroplane in proportion to 
 its wing surface, and with a marvelous instinc- 
 tive knowledge of flight, takes advantage of air 
 currents, and, when they are sufficiently strong in 
 an upward degree, he is able, by gliding in circles, 
 to mount higher and higher without a flap of his 
 wings. Lacking the upward currents he would 
 fail to rise or even to maintain the same level, 
 for, after each downward glide, his ascending 
 glide would fall short of his previous elevation. 
 One can coast on a sled down one hill and up 
 another but not to the same level. One must 
 walk the rest of the way. If the up-currents are 
 not sufficient, the hawk has to do a little hill- 
 climbing by ordinary wing strokes and he then 
 glides again and swings up as far as he can. 
 The up-currents of the higher air, we now know 
 from aviators and meteorologists, are sometimes 
 very powerful, especially on days that are calm 
 enough on the surface of the ground. That 
 hawks are past-masters in taking advantage of 
 these currents no one can doubt. 
 
 When a strong wind blows against a cliff or 
 
244 BEACH GRASS 
 
 a steep hill it is evident, even to the ground 
 walker, that powerful up-currents are formed. 
 If he stands on the edge of the cliff the loose 
 ends of his garments are blown upwards. Hawks 
 often take advantage of this state of affairs and, 
 if the up-current is strong enough, are able to 
 poise, like a boy's kite, motionless on outstretched 
 wings. Here gravity takes the place of the 
 string. Like a kite the hawk swings about if the 
 wind is gusty. If the wind drops temporarily 
 he must needs maintain his position by hovering. 
 This demonstration of the use of up-currents 
 should be plain to every one. There is no mys- 
 tery about it. The rough-kgged hawk is an 
 adept in poising in up-currents. Many a time 
 have I watched him in Labrador and Ipswich 
 poised thus. 
 
 One of the most intimate studies I have ever 
 made of the use of up-currents by birds, was in 
 the case of gannets at the Bonaventure cliffs in 
 the Gaspe Peninsula. Against these splendid 
 cliffs some three hundred feet in height a strong 
 sea-breeze was often blowing, and it was very 
 evident even to my dull senses, as I stood on the 
 
HAWKING 245 
 
 brow of the cliff that the air was deflected ii))- 
 wards. The great snowy birds were circling 
 about on their outstretched pinions, which were 
 held motionless except for the slight adjustments 
 needed from time to time by the varying gusts. 
 Many of them passed within fifteen feet of me, as 
 I sat along the dwarfed spruces on the brink of 
 the cliffs, so that I could study every movement. 
 One bird that I kept within my vision soared in 
 circles, perhaps three hundred feet in diameter, 
 with never a flap of his wings except for a 
 moment when he attempted to alight near his 
 nest on a ledge. Ten times he essayed a landing, 
 but it was not until the eleventh circuit that the 
 conditions were entirely to his liking and the task 
 was accomplished. On each of the last three 
 rounds he executed an additional smaller circle, 
 thus completing a perfect figure of eight. It was 
 a beautiful demonstration of the use made by 
 birds of ascending currents of air. 
 
 Near this same island at Perce is a rose-colored 
 peak, the Montaigne Rouge or Pic d'Aurore 
 which rises seven hundred feet sheer from the sea. 
 About its precipitous sides herring gulls were al- 
 
246 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ways passing back and forth to their nests, and, 
 taking advantage of the up-currents produced by 
 the strong sea-breeze striking the cliffs, were float- 
 ing upwards like white feathers. Occasionally 
 a black feather was to be seen, as ravens 
 visited the same cliffs intent on robbing the gulls' 
 nests of eggs or young. One raven that I 
 watched floated upwards the seven hundred feet 
 with scarcely a wing stroke, born up by the gale. 
 
 While it is a common thing to see a pair of 
 hawks of the same species mounting together in 
 circles into the blue, it is not often that hawks 
 of different species play together thus. On a 
 beautiful May day I watched a large duck 
 hawk and a marsh hawk apparently playing to- 
 gether, they circled about high up, the upper one 
 frequently falling rapidly as if to strike the 
 lower, who would then turn over to grapple, al- 
 though, as far as I could see, they never actually 
 touched each other. This was repeated again 
 and again, sometimes one and sometimes the other 
 the aggressor. 
 
 When that bird of Jove and of Washington, 
 the bald eagle, soars into the vault of heaven — 
 
HAWKING 247 
 
 a rare sight in these parts — one must needs hold 
 his breath in wonder and admiration. The 
 snowy-white head and tail flash out as they catch 
 the sunlight on each successive turn of the circle. 
 Each long feather of the wings stands out like 
 fingers of a hand. Higher and higher he goes, 
 soaring about in great circles with majestic grace. 
 Suddenly he turns and launches his great aero- 
 plane downward with amazing speed. 
 Hawking is indeed a sport of Kings I 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Courtship in Birds 
 
 ''The blackbird hence selects her sooty spouse; 
 The nightingale^ her musical compeer^ 
 Lured by the well-known voice ^ the bird of night. 
 Smit with her dusky wings and greenish eyes, 
 Woos his dun paramour. The beauteous race 
 Speak the chaste love of their progenitors. 
 When, by the spring invited, they exult 
 In woods and fields, and to the sun unfold 
 Their plumes, that with paternal colours glow.'' 
 
 — Addison 
 
 THE difference between the mentality of 
 birds and of man is enormous and we must 
 be on our guard against imputing purely 
 human motive to the lower animals. On the 
 other hand the difference between man and the 
 lower animals in many important matters is not 
 one of kind, but one merely of degree. 
 
 A gull will drag a dried fish from the upper 
 beach to the water to soften it before eating, a 
 
 248 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 249 
 
 grackle will dip a tough bit of biscuit in the water 
 for the same purpose, and a man will soften a 
 hard crust in his coffee. How much is sub-con- 
 scious instinct or reflex action in some or all of 
 these cases and how much is self-conscious reason- 
 ing and forethought — it is not my purpose to dis- 
 cuss here. To call it instinct in all cases in the 
 lower animals and reason in all cases in man may 
 possibly savor of conceit. 
 
 The desire to live, to obtain food and to mate 
 are primitive inborn instincts common to both the 
 lower animals and to man. To gratify these in- 
 stincts similar actions are resorted to by both the 
 lower animals and man. The actions of a child 
 desiring food from a table and those of a dog un- 
 der the same circumstances are very much alike. 
 Each appeals by voice and actions for the food, 
 each is anxious to please the owner oi the 
 food, and each — unless the point has been 
 reached in its experience of life when it fears 
 the consequences of unlawful acts — will avail 
 itself of an opportunity to surreptitiously snatch 
 the food. 
 
 In the same wav the desin^ of the malr bird 
 
250 BEACH GRASS 
 
 to please the female more than its rivals please 
 the same bird appeals to us as a very reasonable 
 and very human point of view. This is what 
 leads to courtship, and in this courtship rivalry 
 it is natural to suppose that the best bird wins. 
 Although it has been somewhat the fashion of 
 late to decry Darwin's theory of sexual selec- 
 tion and to substitute others for it, its simplic- 
 ity and common sense still appeal to many, 
 and it is worth while occasionally to consult the 
 original text. 
 
 Darwin published his ''Origin or Species" in 
 1859. In Chapter IV he says he is led "to say a 
 few words on what I have called Sexual Selec- 
 tion. This form of selection depends, not on a 
 struggle for existence in relation to other organic 
 beings or to external conditions, but on a struggle 
 between the individuals of one sex, generally the 
 males, for the possession of the other sex. The 
 result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, 
 but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, 
 therefore, less rigorous than natural selection. 
 Generally, the most vigorous males, those which 
 are best fitted for their places in nature, will 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 251 
 
 leave most progeny. But in many cases, victory 
 depends not so much on general vigor, as on 
 having special weapons conhned to the male sex. 
 A hornless stag or spurless cock would have a 
 poor chance of leaving numerous offspring. 
 
 ''Amongst birds, the contest is often of a more 
 peaceful character. All those who have attended 
 to the subject, believe that there is the severest 
 rivalry between the males of many species to at- 
 tract, by singing, the females. The rock-thrush 
 of Guiana, birds of paradise, and some others, 
 congregate; and successive males display with the 
 most elaborate care, and show off in the best 
 manner their most gorgeous plumage; they like- 
 wise perform strange antics before the females, 
 which, standing by as spectators, at last choose 
 the most attractive partner. 
 
 "I cannot here enter on the necessary details; 
 but if man can in a short time give beauty and an 
 elegant carriage to his bantams, according to his 
 standard of beauty, I can see no good reason to 
 doubt that female birds, by selecting, during 
 thousands of generations, the most melodious or 
 beautiful males, according to their standard 
 
252 BEACH GRASS 
 
 of beauty, might produce a marked effect." 
 Eliot Howard/ on the other hand, believes 
 that display and extravagant bodily antics are 
 merely ''reflex actions directly resulting from 
 any excessive excitement, that they are not con- 
 fined solely to courtship and do not in any way 
 influence the female." The fact that the bril- 
 liantly arrayed male Argus pheasant and the 
 dull-colored Savin's warbler both spread out 
 and raise their wings and tails during courtship 
 seem to Howard a strong argument against sex- 
 ual selection. 
 
 Pycraft " says, "In these pages it is contended 
 that neither brilliant coloration nor any form of 
 ornamentation is to be ascribed to the direct ac- 
 tion of 'sexual selection.' That is to say such 
 conspicuous features have not been dependent on 
 the action of formal choice for their survival 
 and development, but are rather the 'expression 
 points' of the internal, inherent growth variations, 
 which, not being inimical to the welfare of the 
 species, have been free to pursue their develop- 
 ment in any direction which apparent chance 
 
 1 The British Warblers. 
 
 2 Courtship of Animals. 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 253 
 
 may dictate." In another place he says: "The 
 frills and furbelows" — crests, vivid hues, etc., 
 can — "be traced to the stimulating action of 
 the 'hormones' which control both pigmentation 
 and structure, as is shown by the fact that both 
 are modified by any interference with the glands 
 in question. Such ornamental features are then 
 the concomitants, not the result, of sexual selec- 
 tion," and again "sexual selection, other things 
 being equal, operates by according the greatest 
 number of descendents to the most amorous and 
 not necessarily to those of the highest hues." 
 He is therefore willing to admit that amorous 
 behavior by song and dance and display of plum- 
 age influence and attract the female but he ob- 
 jects to the bold statement that she selects the 
 male. Such mental qualifications satisfy those 
 who would cast aside Darwin's theory of sexual 
 selection, but after all is said this theory, if not 
 taken too literally, explains the facts better than 
 any other. It is not necessary to assume that the 
 female critically examines the display of color, 
 dance or song of the rivals and balances them 
 in her mind, but if we admit, as Pycraft is will- 
 
254 BEACH GRASS 
 
 ing to do, that she is attracted and influenced by 
 these, even if only in a reflex or sub-conscious 
 way, we have practically admitted the truth of 
 Darwin's theory. The fittest male in any or all 
 of these respects will be more likely to perpetuate 
 the race. 
 
 The motives of dislay of color, dance and song 
 are easily understood, for in one form or another 
 they have all been used in human courtship. The 
 likenesses are fundamental and extend from the 
 lowest to the highest in the human species, but 
 are most strikingly seen in the lowest, more primi- 
 tive races. 
 
 Although at the present day and among the 
 highest developed human races the display of 
 bright colors is more marked among the females 
 than the males, it must be remembered that this 
 is a recent development. Only a few generations 
 back the males, instead of wearing black or som- 
 bre clothing, were as brilliantly apparelled as 
 the females, and among savages it is the male 
 that is strikingly bedecked with feathers, tattoo 
 markings and paint, while the female is quiet 
 enough in her apparel or lack of apparel. The 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 255 
 
 tendency of the highly civilized male to revert 
 to brilliant display of clothing is shown in his 
 fondness for military finery and for striking 
 colors when he is freed from the restraining hand 
 of convention, as witness the cowboy and the 
 sportsman. 
 
 In both bird and man the display of bright 
 colors and attractive patterns, the dance and the 
 song, even if of courtship origin and competitive 
 in character, may lose the conscious, sexual side 
 and be continued at other times for mere pleas- 
 ure, in other words the original incentive for dis- 
 play, song and dance may be entirely lost, but 
 that does not seem to me to be any argument 
 against the theory of sexual selection. 
 
 The explanation of the brilliant colors of male 
 birds on a mere physico-chemical basis due to 
 exuberance of vitality, the maleness of the males, 
 or the stimulation of the hormones in the court- 
 ship season fails to account for the fact that the 
 brilliance of display in this season may occur 
 without the growth of new feathers, but merely 
 by the wearing down of old feathers and the un- 
 veiling of concealed patterns. This is true in 
 
256 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the case of the snow bunting, the junco and the 
 chewink, and is strikingly shown in the case of 
 the English sparrow, where the process goes on 
 all unnoticed at our feet. 
 
 The ultra-concealing-colorationists say that 
 the brilliant colors serve to conceal, but one who 
 has watched eiders in the north, even though he 
 admits that the green and white and black may 
 match the iceberg and the sea and the rocks, is 
 as sure that the colors are for display and for 
 conspicuousness as he is that black is black and 
 white is white. The speed with which the male 
 discards his brilliant dress when the spring 
 madness is over seems to bear him out in this 
 opinion. 
 
 A recent writer ^ in ''The Auk" states his opin- 
 ion, that the brilliant colors and markings of the 
 group of warblers "act as a uniform, faciliating 
 the recognition by a bird of its own kind just 
 as they facilitate its recognition by a bird stu- 
 dent." How then does he account for the fact 
 that the females and young, who need most to 
 be identified, are most obscurely marked, and 
 
 ij. T. Nichols. Auk, 1912, XXXVI, 228. 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 257 
 
 who can doubt that birds can not only identify 
 their own species with ease no matter how poorly 
 marked, but can pick out even their own off- 
 spring from others'? Does a Chinese woman 
 have any difficulty in recognizing her own off- 
 spring in a group of hundreds, all sinularl) 
 dressed and looking alike as peas to our un- 
 trained eyes? Or, to bring the matter nearer 
 home, watch a mother enter a schoolyard in 
 which a hundred small children all of the same 
 age and dress are playing. She picks out her own 
 child, brushes its dress and wipes its nose with 
 a perfect certainty of conviction as to its identi- 
 fication, but if asked for the field marks, is un- 
 able to give them. 
 
 That the brilliant colors and markings of birds 
 are of use in courtship and that many of them are 
 the slow result of sexual selection seems to me to 
 be a reasonable supposition because the male bird 
 in courtship always displays these colors and 
 markings to the best advantage. Where two or 
 more males, as is often the case, are eagerly 
 doing their best in display it would seem natural 
 that the one who makes the most display is more 
 
258 BEACH GRASS 
 
 likely to excite and win the female. If this were 
 not the case the display would fall into innocuous 
 desuetude. Mr. William Brewster once told 
 me the interesting case of a pair of summer 
 tanagers in the south where he shot the male. 
 In a short time the female appeared with another 
 male. This one also he shot and so on until he 
 had obtained three or four of this female's 
 spouses. On careful examination of plumage it 
 was seen that the most brilliant plumage was 
 possessed by number one and that the brilliancy 
 decreased successively in the others. 
 
 The fact that the brilliant plumage is assumed 
 in many birds for the nuptial season only, seems 
 to bear out the im.portance of display for court- 
 ship. The ducks go into the eclipse plumage 
 immediately after the courtship season. The 
 brilliantly marked male wood duck and the eider 
 alike assume the modest and quiet dress of the 
 female. This is true of many other birds. The 
 bobolink and the scarlet tanager, the goldfinch 
 and the myrtle warbler doff their striking dress 
 in the fall and appear in the modest apparel of the 
 female and immature. 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 2^-g 
 
 Courtship means the act of wooing in love. 
 Whatever theory we accept we must admit that 
 the male appears ^ to endeavor to attract the 
 female in one or all of three ways : first by a dis- 
 play of bright or striking colors, secondly by 
 postures or movements which accentuate this dis- 
 play or call attention to his agility or skill — in 
 other words by the dance in its broadest sense, 
 — and thirdly by sounds either vocal or instru- 
 mental — song in its broadest sense. 
 
 The classical courtship of the peacock illus- 
 trates in an extreme form the display of color. 
 It also includes two other factors of dance and 
 song. It may well be sketched here as an ex- 
 aggerated form and epitome of our subject. 
 
 In the presence of the hen and when in an 
 amorous mood the peacock erects the stiff tail 
 feathers which support the marvelous plumes that 
 
 1 The fact that peacocks and turkey cocks delight in display- 
 ing their charms before people would seem to show that they 
 are conscious of the beauty of their plumage and vain of 
 their ability to show it off. When they are displaying before 
 their hens, they must, in the same way, be conscious of their 
 beauty. In other words, is there not as much reason in what 
 they do as in the strutting of the painted and befeathered 
 savage? Are their actions merely mechanical and instinctive? 
 I do not think so. 
 
26o BEACH GRASS 
 
 arise from the back and form the upper tail 
 coverts. He walks with mincing steps, turning 
 this way and then that, so that his beauty may 
 be seen from all points by the hen who walks 
 carelessly by. Seen from in front, his blue-green 
 head and neck with black and white face markings 
 and tufted plumes stand out like a Chinese jade 
 carving in the center of a concave sea-shell of 
 shimmering green, embossed at regular intervals 
 with eyes of marvelous beauty and detail. From 
 behind, the stiff gray tail feathers supporting the 
 shell are seen to be set off below by an abundance 
 of black and white down. The wings of brown 
 and blue frame the sides. Suddenly the peacock 
 turns and flashes the full radiance of his beauty 
 directly at the hen, he vibrates his downward 
 stretched wings and quivers his stiff tail feathers 
 so that they give forth a sound of rattling reeds. 
 The green disk is thereby set all of a tremble in 
 time with this instrumental music, the great bird 
 bows towards the object of his affection, emits a 
 raucous cry, and the green, quivering sea-shell 
 curves beseechingly towards her. Who can resist 
 such fascination *? 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 261 
 
 But all birds are not so well fitted for display 
 as the peacock who appears to have reached the 
 very acme in this direction, but a study of some 
 of the less brilliant birds bears out, perhaps 
 more clearly, the efforts of the male in display. 
 The male red-winged blackbird, when engaged in 
 feeding on the ground, appears as a simple black 
 bird. Sometimes not a trace of color is visible, 
 although he may show a narrow yellow line or 
 a somewhat broader line with red in it on his 
 shoulders. When engaged in courtship these 
 same shoulders blaze with scarlet color. Not 
 only are the surrounding black feathers pushed 
 back so that the epaulets are broad and con- 
 spicuous, but each individual scarlet feather is 
 erected and the epaulets are thick and striking. 
 Not only that, but he flies slowly and directly to- 
 wards the female and the beauty spots are dis- 
 played to her eyes, if she will but bestow a glance 
 at them, under the most favorable and dazzling 
 circumstances. 
 
 The male eider swimming about and bowing 
 to the female suddenly rises up on his tail in the 
 water and flashes out the magnificent jet black 
 
262 BEACH GRASS 
 
 shield on his belly, a color that ought not to be 
 there according to the concealing colorationists. 
 In the same way the merganser drake displays his 
 splendid white shirt-front with its delicate tinge 
 of salmon pink. 
 
 The male bittern, as he strides about, extends 
 the fluffy white feathers from under the wings in 
 striking display. The male blue-headed vireo 
 puffs out the yellow flank feathers till he seems 
 nearly double the size of the slender female, and 
 the myrtle warbler droops his wings to display 
 his yellow rump and puffs out the yellow and 
 black feathers on his sides. 
 
 The black guillemot as he curtesies to the 
 female in the water opens wide his mouth and 
 displays for her admiration the scarlet lining. 
 The display of the inflated orange-colored neck- 
 sake of the heath hen is but a small part of the 
 remarkable courtship display of this bird. 
 
 The black duck and the domestic pigeon in 
 the ardor of courtship take short flights by the 
 females and the white lining of their wings be- 
 come momentarily in evidence. The golden-eye 
 drake displays from time to time his brilliant 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 263 
 
 orange-yellow tarsi and feet above the water as 
 he performs his song and dance before the modest 
 duck. Incidentally, and perhaps accidentally at 
 first, he increases the display by the spurt of water 
 caused by the movement of the foot. In the 
 mxrganser this spurt of water has evidently be- 
 come of primary importance and is a most con- 
 spicuous feature, but it is plain that it arose from 
 an endeavor to display a colored foot. From a 
 display of color it has become a form of a 
 dance with an added mechanical feature. All 
 three factors of courtship are so intricately 
 mingled that is not always possible to treat of 
 a single one alone. 
 
 Secondly the dance, using the word in the 
 broadest sense, is frequently employed in avian 
 courtship. In the simplest form the bird spreads 
 its tail, slightly opens its wings and puffs out its 
 feathers. This may be done rhythmically, and, 
 with each motion, the song is emitted, for song 
 and dance are almost always associated. The 
 bronzed grackle illustrates this simple dance and 
 at the same time very simple song. In slightly 
 more elaborate form the bird may also bob its 
 
264 BEACH GRASS 
 
 head and with still more elaboration swing or 
 sway its whole body or jump up and down. The 
 blue-headed vireo, for example, bobs and bows in 
 addition to puffing out its yellow flanks, the cow- 
 bird, besides puffing and spreading, bobs its head 
 and swings its whole body, as if it were falling 
 forward, the bluebird in the excitement of court- 
 ship jumps up and down on its perch and the 
 flicker and bobs and curtesies in true cakewalk 
 fashion. 
 
 That the dance does not necessarily mean leg 
 movements is exemplified not only by birds but 
 by various primitive human races, where postur- 
 ing and movements of the head, arms and trunk 
 may constitute a large part of the performance. 
 Among the ducks the movements of the head and 
 neck are sometimes very striking and bizarre. 
 The golden-eye, besides performing with its feet 
 in the way already described, has a remarkable 
 head and neck dance and posturing in the court- 
 ship. The drake extends its head and neck 
 straight forward like a bowsprit, then vertically 
 upwards, then backwards so that the occiput rests 
 on the rump, and lastly forward to the normal 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 265 
 
 position. Black ducks, baldpates, buffle-hcads 
 and others make short springs and flights from the 
 water; mallards, scaups and pintails bob or bow 
 and red-breasted mergansers courtesy with a 
 swinging dip of the whole body. Bowing and 
 courtesying are as common in avian as in human 
 courtship. 
 
 Among our birds the gannet has perhaps the 
 most elaborate dance, one that in completeness 
 and in many of its features suggests the dance of 
 the Layson albatross so well described by Pro- 
 fessor W. K. Fisher. ^ It is worth while describ- 
 ing this dance of the gannets in detail, for, as far 
 as I can discover, there is no description of it in 
 any American ornithology and I have found no 
 mention of it in the pages of the "Nuttall Bulle- 
 tin" or 'The Auk." Mr. P. A. Taverner " is the 
 only one in this country who has referred to this 
 dance as far as I know, and his description is very 
 brief and omits many of the most interesting de- 
 tails. He appropriately calls it ''a sort of con- 
 ventionalized ritual." A fuller description is 
 
 1 Auk, XXI, 1904, pp. 8-20. 
 
 2 The Gannets of Bonaventure Island, Ottawa Naturalist, 
 XXXII, 1918, p. 24. 
 
266 BEACH GRASS 
 
 given by Mr. J. H. Gumey ^ in his monograph on 
 the gannet. He says : "This sort of thing can be 
 seen with variations, any fine day in July, on the 
 Bass Rock, but it cannot be the affection of court- 
 ship, because the courting season is passed." 
 He ascribes it to the affection of the gannets for 
 each other. 
 
 The bowing and posturing and other strange 
 antics of the Layson albatross is spoken of by 
 Fisher as "a curious dance, or perhaps 
 more appropriately a Cakewalk," and he goes on 
 to say: "This game or whatever one may wish 
 to call it very likely originated in past time dur- 
 ing the courting season, but it certainly has long 
 since lost any such significance. I believe the 
 birds now practise these antics for the pure fun 
 they derive." These remarks I believe apply ex- 
 actly to the dance of the gannets. I spent many 
 hours one summer under most favorable con- 
 ditions near the great gannet nesting ledges on 
 the Cliffs of Bonaventure Island, P. Q., and I 
 saw the dance repeated by hundreds of pairs 
 many times, and I came to the same conclusion 
 
 iThe Gannet, p. 377. 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 267 
 
 that Fisher did in the ease of the Layson 
 albatross, namely that it was originally a eourt- 
 ship dance and that it was continued from habit 
 and from joy of it, in the same way that the song 
 sparrow continues to sing long after the nuptial 
 season. 
 
 Let me describe a typical performance: As 
 the sexes are alike in plumage they cannot be dis- 
 tinguished apart. One of them, we will assume 
 it is the male, is swinging around in great circles 
 on rigidly outstretched and motionless wings. 
 He passes within a few yards of me and swings 
 towards a shelf crowded with birds brooding their 
 downy, black-faced young. Alighting on the 
 edge he elbows his way along the ledge, notwith- 
 standing the angry looks, the black mouths sud- 
 denly opened and the vicious pecks of his neigh- 
 bors. All of these he returns in kind. Arrived 
 at his nest, he is enthusiastically greeted by his 
 mate, who, disregarding the young bird beneath 
 her, rises up to do her part in the dance. The 
 birds stand face to face, the wings slightly raised 
 and opened, the tails elevated and spread. They 
 bow towards each other, then raise their heads 
 
268 BEACH GRASS 
 
 and wave their bills as if they were whetting these 
 powerful instruments, or as if they were perform- 
 ing the polite preliminaries of a fencing bout. 
 From time to time this process is interrupted as 
 they bow to each other, and appear to caress each 
 other as each dips its pale blue bill and cream- 
 colored head first to one side and then to the 
 other of its mate's snowy breast. With unbated 
 enthusiasm and ardor, the various actions of this 
 curious and loving dance are repeated again and 
 again and often continue for several minutes. 
 After the dance the pair preen themselves and 
 each other, or the one first at the nest flies away 
 and the new arrival waddles around so as to get 
 back of the nestling, and the strange process of 
 feeding takes place. 
 
 This dance is not only performed by pairs as 
 just described, but not infrequently individuals 
 perform a pas seul, it may be because he or she 
 is wearied with waiting for its mate. The wings 
 are slightly raised and opened, the tail elevated 
 and spread, the bill pointed vertically upwards 
 and waved aloft, then dipped to one side under 
 the half open wing and then to the other, the bill 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 269 
 
 raised and waved again and so on over and over 
 again. Owing to the great volume of sound 
 from the ledges it is impossible to distinguish any 
 individual performer, and I was unable to tell at 
 what point in the dance and to what extent the 
 song was important. The sound is like that of 
 a thousand rattling looms in a great factor} , a 
 rough, vibrating, pulsing sound — car-ra^ car-ra, 
 car-ra. 
 
 The movements in the air that may or ma}- not 
 be accompanied with song may be classed in this 
 division of the dance. The bobolink, rising in 
 irregular circles, or progressing in a horizontal 
 plane on rapidly vibrated down-curved wings, is 
 expressing his amorous feelings by dance as well 
 as by song. His flight often concludes by a 
 rapid descent with wings pointing obliquely up- 
 ward, forming a display by posture and motion — 
 in themselves forms of dance. The ardor of 
 courtship bears many a bird aloft, and he ex- 
 presses his feelings with his wings as well as with 
 his voice. One may name not only the oven-binl 
 and the Maryland yellow-throat, the bobolink 
 and the orchard oriole, the semipalmated sand- 
 
270 BEACH GRASS 
 
 piper and the upland plover, the horned lark 
 and the pipit, but many other birds in this cate- 
 gory, some of which like the song sparrow, sing 
 chiefly from a perch. The horned lark mounts 
 silently to a great height and pours forth his 
 song in long periods, sometimes out of sight in 
 the low-lying clouds. The pipit sings as he as- 
 cends nearly vertically and, arrived at the summit 
 of his ambitions, descends quickly, still singing, 
 to the earth. 
 
 All birds who indulge in flight song are apt to 
 quiver their wings rapidly in their ecstasy. 
 Sometimes this motion of wings becomes of pri- 
 mary importance and the bird flies with quiver- 
 ing wings but voiceless, or even vibrates his 
 wings rapidly from a perch. This sometimes 
 happens in birds that ordinarily sing at the same 
 time. I have seen it, for example, in the song 
 sparrow. The pheasant quivers his wings rapidly 
 but nearly noiselessly, then emits his vocal crow 
 to be followed by a loud clapping of the wings. 
 The ptarmigan vibrates his wings rapidly in 
 flight and calls at the same time; the spruce 
 partridge flies from a tree stub to the ground with 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 271 
 
 audibly vibrating wings, while the ruffed grouse 
 stands on a log and, by the rapid whirring of his 
 wings, emits his characteristic "drumming." 
 That this drumming is evolved from a flight 
 song and that there was once a vocal part of the 
 performance, I have little doubt. These ex- 
 amples show the stages in the evolution. 
 
 The loud clapping together of the wings be- 
 hind the back in domestic pigeons during flight 
 and their habit of soaring with wings obliquely 
 upwards, although common at all times, are most 
 marked in the courtship season and are probably 
 of courtship origin. The V-shaped pose of the 
 tail-feathers of the bronzed grackle is probably 
 of the same nature, for it is discarded in mid- 
 summer. 
 
 Both the Savannah and vesper sparrow stand 
 or walk on the ground and elevate and sometimes 
 vibrate their wings rapidly above their backs. 
 They also fly slowly a short distance above the 
 ground with head and tail up and wings rapidly 
 fluttering and deliver their song. 
 
 The rapid headlong plunges of the nighthawk 
 may be classed as a display of motion, a form of 
 
272 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the dance. Incidentally, and perhaps accident- 
 ally at first, a loud booming sound is produced by 
 the rush of air through the wing feathers. This 
 instrumental music is now the important feature, 
 although the dance is by no means a negligible 
 one. The raven turns a rolling-over somersault 
 in the air, and the marsh hawk plunges from a 
 great height, loops the loop or turns a sidewise 
 somersault. The chat with dangling legs dances 
 crazily about in the air, and the kingbird executes 
 a series of zig-zag and erratic flights, emitting at 
 the same time a harsh double scream. This is 
 a true courtship flight song but it is neither grace- 
 ful to our eyes or pleasing to our ears. The 
 taste of the kingbird in these matters appears to 
 us to be poor. 
 
 The impossibility of treating in turn only one 
 of the primary divisions — display, dance and 
 song is well shown by these examples. The case 
 of the courtship of the heath hen is still more 
 difficult for all three factors are inextricably 
 mingled. I have already alluded to the display 
 of neck-sacks of this bird, orange in color and 
 shape, a very striking and beautiful feature, but 
 
COURTSHIP IN BIRDS 273 
 
 secondary or incidental to the production of son^ 
 to be described later. The erection of the neck- 
 wings which ordinarily help cover the deflated 
 neck-sacks, the spreading and erection of the tail, 
 the vibration of the down-stretched wings, the 
 pirouetting and turning of the body and the 
 rapid stamping of the feet in this species are all 
 forms of the dance. 
 
 Lastly, in this brief review and rough classi- 
 fication of the courtship actions of birds, the song 
 is to be considered. By song I do not mean 
 necessarily a melody or musical strain pleasing 
 to human ears — although many of these pro- 
 duced by the higher species of birds are extremely 
 pleasing — but any sound which is customarily 
 connected with courtship. Courtship song, as 
 thus understood, may be either vocal or instru- 
 mental. The rattling of the stiff tail feathers 
 of the peacock and the rolling drum made by 
 the wings of the ruffed grouse fall into the instru- 
 mental category. The rapid stamping of the 
 feet by the heath hen produces a ratta-tat-tat 
 like that made on a kettle drum. The tooting 
 sound, similar to that made by blowing across 
 
274 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the top of a bottle, produced by the neck-sacks 
 of this same bird, should, I suppose, be classed 
 as instrumental song. The sounds made by the 
 clapping together behind the back of the wings 
 of the domestic pigeon, of the clapping on the 
 sides of the pheasant are, of course, in the instru- 
 mental class. 
 
 The woodcock in his wonderful courtship 
 flight, as he ascends straight up in the dim light 
 of early morning or late evening, gives forth loud 
 sounds that cease whenever the bird sets his 
 wings and momentarily soars — instrumental 
 sounds made apparently by his wings. During 
 the last part of the ascent and during the descent 
 he gives forth sweeter vocal notes or whistles. 
 Before he is again on the wing he emits at in- 
 tervals loud vocal peents, preceded by faint 
 gulping sounds accompanied by a puffing out of 
 the body and slight raising of the wings. 
 
 The Wilson snipe flies about in his ecstatic 
 courtship when the light is so poor that it is 
 difficult to observe his flight, and sounds arise — 
 quavering or bleating in character — which are 
 believed to be instrumental in their nature, due 
 
COURTSHIP IX BIRDS 275 
 
 to the passage of the air through the stiff primary 
 feathers of the wings, or, as some believe, 
 through the outer feathers of the tail. The 
 
 *to 
 
 loud booming or whirring sound made by the 
 nighthawk in his spectacular plunges has already 
 been mentioned, an instrumental music of cu- 
 rious character. 
 
 The drumming of the flicker on a hollow stub 
 or on a roof or chimney-pot is clearly to be 
 classed as instrumental music. I have heard this 
 bird interrupt his spring song to drum and later 
 continue with his vocal music. 
 
 The song of courtship produced by the vocal 
 organs of the bird varies from the rasping, 
 vibrating note of the golden-eye or the aa-ou of 
 the eider, emitted at the height of the dance and 
 display, the harsh scream of the kingbird or the 
 tiS'ik of the Henslow's sparrow to the clear, 
 plaintive whistle of the white-throated sparrow, 
 and the serene, spiritual hymn of the hermit 
 thrush. While the simpler, more primitive songs 
 are given forth only during courtship excite- 
 ment, it is evident that many, especially the more 
 complicated and cesthetic ones, although at their 
 
276 BEACH GRASS 
 
 best and sometimes elaborated or extended under 
 courtship excitement, are often continued and re- 
 peated for the mere enjoyment of the performer 
 in his own music. The autumnal recrudescence 
 of the amatory instinct, often displayed in song, 
 is well-known. 
 
 The subject of bird song is one apart by itself, 
 and I have alluded to it in this brief manner 
 merely to round out the classification, made in the 
 beginning of this paper, of display; dance and 
 song — the important features of bird courtship. 
 
CHy\PTEH XII 
 
 On Certain Humanities 
 
 ^'The most of our kind are not naturalists hut humanists'' 
 
 — Shaler 
 
 "The proper study of mankind is man' 
 
 —Pope 
 
 A REGION of seashore, marsh and dune 
 attracts certain forms of human activi- 
 ties, all, owing to the setting, more or 
 less picturesque. The cutting of the salt hay 
 and the life of the clammer which I have de- 
 scribed in "Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes" are of 
 this nature. The profession of eeler, of herring- 
 torcher, of sander and of light-keeper belong 
 peculiarly to this region, and of these and of 
 their predecessors I would say a few words here. 
 Before the white man came, these dunes and 
 marshes and the adjoining fertile land were fre- 
 quented by the Indian. His was an interesting 
 humanity. In the old histories of this region 
 
 277 
 
278 BEACH GRASS 
 
 much is said of the Indians, of their hunting and 
 fishing, and of their cornfields planted on the 
 hillsides, cleared by fire of the forest. Without 
 recourse to historical documents one can still read 
 the record of their activities here. In the dunes, 
 in the marsh islands and on many a hillside close 
 to the sea or to an estuary, deposits of clam 
 shells are exposed by the blowing of the sand, 
 the cutting of streams or the turn of the plough- 
 share. 
 
 The study of these deposits, or kitchen mid- 
 dens, is a long one and full of interest. I can 
 imagine that an independent gold or diamond 
 miner might be loath to stop work, thinking that 
 the next turn of the pick would reveal a price- 
 less nugget or gem. In the same way one who 
 digs in a shell heap has always the vision before 
 him of a prize. These prizes would appear very 
 trivial to a gold miner, but may cause a great 
 thrill of satisfaction to a naturalist. They con- 
 sist largely in bones and fragments of bones, and 
 even by a very small piece of bone one may re- 
 construct in imagination some most interesting 
 creature. I have found, for example, in shell 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 279 
 
 heaps on the Maine coast, many bones, including; 
 those of the wild turkey and the great auk, and, 
 here at Ipswich, the bones of deer and fox and 
 seal, of wading birds and ducks and of many 
 fishes. The larger bones had all been split u{) 
 for the marrow, and the smaller bones had their 
 spongy ends missing as if they had been eaten by 
 dogs. 
 
 One discovery led to an amusing error. In a 
 shell heap many years ago I unearthed or ''un- 
 shelled," one might say, what apeared to be the 
 upper section of a bird's bill, but it had an un- 
 usual polish, foreign to any of our birds' bills. 
 In shape and size it most closely resembled that 
 of a royal tern. I took it to several specialists 
 at Harvard, and each repudiated it in turn. 
 The ornithologist said it was not a bird's bill, 
 the mammologist that it was no part of a four- 
 legged creature, and the expert in crabs said it 
 was no part of a crab. I therefore sent it to 
 Washington, the fountain head of all knowl- 
 edge, and word came back that it was the bill 
 of a royal tern, certified to by several well-known 
 ornithologists. Fortunately I did not rush into 
 
28o BEACH GRASS 
 
 print the interesting fact that a royal tern had 
 been found so far north, for I was not satisfied. 
 There was a peculiar polish in the enamel coat- 
 ing that "bill." A few years later I was look- 
 ing at a dogfish thrown up by the waves on the 
 beach, and, on examining the spur or tooth on 
 the dorsal fin, I saw at once that it was my 
 "royal tern's bill." Then I published "A case of 
 mistaken diagnosis" but naturally did not dis- 
 close the names of the experts in Washington. 
 I shall never be deceived by a dogfish's dorsal 
 spur again. 
 
 Other prizes are the work of Indians. Bits 
 of rude pottery — potsherds — are not uncommon, 
 some of them ornamented by a pointed stick or 
 by the impression of a twisted cord. Flint chips 
 and stone implements are rare. I have found a 
 few bone awls and needles, some of which resem- 
 ble closely those made by the Eskimos at the pres- 
 ent day. I have also found pieces of bone cut 
 or notched. One had eight distinct notches, 
 perhaps a record of enemies slain, or, may be, of 
 wild geese captured. 
 
 At Treadwell's Island, near the mouth of the 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 281 
 Ipswich River, there are extensive shell heaps 
 several feet thick, attesting the prolonged or 
 numerous visits by bands of Indians to this 
 region. Here many of the shells are those of 
 the oyster, a mollusk long since extinct in this 
 region. 
 
 One can picture the summer camp, the skin- 
 covered wigwams, the bark canoes drawn up on 
 the sandy beach of the estuary, the feasts of 
 fish, clams and oysters and other products of the 
 sea, of roasted ears of Indian corn, of sea-bird's 
 eggs and of the flesh of birds and seals and other 
 animals caught in snares and traps, or slain by 
 stealth with stone-tipped spears and arrows. It 
 is probable that many of the Indians in winter 
 moved back into the more densely forested in- 
 terior, partly for shelter from the gales which 
 sweep the sand dunes and marshes of the coast 
 and partly for the better hunting and trapping. 
 This is the custom today of the Mountaineer 
 Indians of Labrador. 
 
 It is evident that the Indians loved this region 
 of dune and marsh, sea and estuary and made 
 full use of the bounteous repast spread with in 
 
282 BEACH GRASS 
 
 its borders. Would that white man had been as 
 frugal at that table I Oysters would still 
 abound, shad and salmon and trout and other 
 fish would throng the estuaries and rivers, sea- 
 birds in great multitudes would lay their eggs on 
 the sandy shores, and great auks, Labrador ducks, 
 Eskimo curlews, wild turkeys and wild pigeons 
 would still be with us. 
 
 As one paddles up the creeks at low tide, fol- 
 lowing the winding channels, one is apt to see 
 from time to time a swift moving shadow, dart- 
 ing in and out of the waving forest of eelgrass. 
 Sometimes the shadow remains long enough to 
 record itself on the retina as an eel. The flesh 
 of the eel is firm and rich with fat, and is much 
 sought after by those who have .learned to like it 
 and have no psychological objection to its snake- 
 like form. In these waters it is caught by lines 
 baited with great masses of worms, it is speared 
 at low tide with barbed tridents, and is entrapped 
 in eel-pots — cylindrical affairs with funnel- 
 shaped openings into which the descent is easy 
 but the return is impossible to creatures of the in- 
 telligence of the eel. 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 283 
 
 For many years an eel-catcher has spent his 
 summers in the pursuit of his craft, living in a 
 shanty in the dunes at Ipswich near Wigwam 
 Hill, and later at Hog Island. He had followed 
 the sea as cook, fisherman, and skipper. Eighteen 
 of these were spent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
 but only once did he set foot on Labrador soil 
 and that was at Little Meccatina Island, and \\v 
 stayed there only five minutes, he said, because he 
 was chilled by the barren aspect of the country 
 and eaten up by mosquitoes. Born on January 
 10, 1828, Captain Thurlow had retired from the 
 sea for many years and has lived in Newburyport, 
 but every summer he gets restless and, in 
 spite of his daughter's protests, would go to 
 Ipswich and take up the life of an eel-catcher and 
 clammer, living alone in his shanty. 
 
 Ordered to vacate his summer home in the 
 dunes, where he was only a squatter, he procured 
 a dozen casks, and, with the friendly help of 
 some Italian workmen, moved his house to the 
 beach and securely lashed it to the casks. Tak- 
 ing advantage of the fiood tide he launched his 
 ark, and, with the aid of a long hawser, a couj^Ie 
 
284 BEACH GRASS 
 
 of anchors and the ebb, he "swung her into the 
 stream and across to Hog Island." Here he put 
 skids and rollers under it and a hay-maker kindly 
 hitched his team to the land and water craft 
 and "in fifteen minutes hauled her up to a safe 
 anchorage above the highest tides." "I was 
 afraid I would make a mess of the job" he said, 
 "but I didn't and it didn't cost me a cent, for the 
 hay-maker wouldn't take anything for his help, 
 and I think he was pleased by some eels I gave 
 him." A strenuous job for even a young man 
 to tackle single handed, and he almost ninety I 
 But he put it through without a hitch and "didn't 
 make a mess of it I" There is courage and vigor 
 and sand, say I, born of life on the sea and in the 
 dunes ! 
 
 At the age of ninety-two he came as usual to 
 his shanty on Hog Island. He had rowed and 
 sailed alone in his dory from Newburyport 
 going down the Merrimac River, through Plum 
 Island River and Sound, up the Ipswich River 
 and Fox Creek, and finally through the canal to 
 Castle-neck River and so down to his beach at 
 Hog Island. He told me he had a cough in the 
 
1 
 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 285 
 
 spring that he could not get rid of, but in a tew 
 days at the beach the cough had k^ft him. He 
 was still erect and vigorous, a hnc-looking man 
 with clean-cut features, snowy hair and beard. 
 He was digging a basket of clams before his door. 
 Few men even twenty years younger could have 
 straightened up as quickly or at all after assum- 
 ing the position of the clammerl He visited 
 his eel-pots in his old weather-beaten dory, us- 
 ing a spritsail whenever the wind was fair, his 
 own sinewy arms pulling at the oars a short 
 fisherman's stroke when the air fell calm. I 
 trust the wind and tide are favorable with him 
 now, and that he may long continue to come an 
 eeling at Ipswich. 
 
 On a pleasant summer day when the wind and 
 tide are fair, one may be so fortunate as to see 
 an old high-floating schooner sailing up the mouth 
 of the Ipswich River between the long bar and 
 the beach, or a similar craft negotiating the more 
 dangerous passage into the Essex River. The 
 destination in the former case is the southern end 
 of Plum Island facing the sound, in the latter 
 the southern end of Ipswich beach and dunes on 
 
286 BEACH GRASS 
 
 the inner side. A week or so later the same 
 schooners, taking advantage of the ebb tide, are 
 departing, but now sunk almost to the level of 
 their decks. With a fresh northwest wind they 
 push a great wave before their broad bows and 
 disappear from sight around the end of Cape 
 Ann, south-bound for Boston. They are sand 
 schooners and their captains and crew are spoken 
 of as Sanders. 
 
 Captain Charley commands the schooner Ed- 
 ward S. Eveleth, "built with copper fastenings," 
 for the Gloucester fisheries forty years ago. The 
 captain has been a sander for over fifty years — he 
 began the year Lincoln was shot — and his father 
 for fifty years had followed the same profession. 
 His father said before he died that, in spite of 
 all his labors, there was more sand at Ipswich 
 beach than there was when he began, which con- 
 firms my own studies and observations that the 
 beach is extending southward. The remains of 
 an iron spindle on a rock now exposed on the 
 beach at low tide, was, when Captain Charley be- 
 gan, separated from the beach by a good channel. 
 
 The sand schooner selects a steep part of a 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 287 
 
 protected beach, comes up to it broadside at hi^^h 
 tide and makes fast by means of hawsers and 
 kedges both bow and stern. A long gangphmk 
 is run out and extended to the s{)ot from which 
 the sand is dug. Men fill broad and capacious 
 wheelbarrows and run them up to the deck of the 
 vessel, where they dump the loose sand into the 
 hold. ''It is the heaviest cargo there is," said 
 Captain Charley, "and very dead; bricks are live 
 in comparison." 
 
 Sanders ply their vocation in winter as well as 
 summer. With a fair wind they can make Bos- 
 ton in seven hours. Captain Charley left Bos- 
 ton on Christmas in 1917 and did not get back 
 until the middle of March. For most of the 
 time he was frozen up. ''Why anybody wants 
 to visit the beach and sand hills I can't see," said 
 the Captain. "If I didn't have to, I wouldn't 
 stay there longer than one minute." ^ 
 
 1 Alas ! the Edivard S. Eveleth has found a grave in the 
 sand and the flowing sea. On an October day in 1922, after 
 she had been filled with sand, a heavy sea, rolling around 
 the point of the dunes, rushed over her decks, and she turned 
 on her beam ends at the edge of the beach. Each tide 
 sucked her deeper into the sand. But it is far better that she 
 ended her days thus than that she sank at sea with loss of life. 
 
288 BEACH GRASS 
 
 Herring torching is a picturesque pursuit. In 
 the fall of the year young herring abound off the 
 beaches and in the estuaries of this sandy region. 
 Herring, like moths are fascinated by a flame, and 
 crowd the waters near a torch carried on a boat. 
 In the old days, the flaming knots of pitch pine, 
 — ^candlewood as it was called — were used as a 
 light. At the present day an iron basket is fixed 
 over the bow of the boat and fed by hand with 
 masses of cotton soaked in kerosene. A still 
 greater improvement is a wire netting cylinder 
 filled with asbestos, supplied with kerosene from 
 a compressed air tank. Motor boats have taken 
 the place of dories propelled by oars. On almost 
 any favorable night in October and November 
 one may see the mouths of the Ipswich and 
 Essex rivers dotted with moving lights. 
 
 It is cold hard work but full of excitement and 
 fisherman's luck. Some nights only a few fish 
 are seen, on other nights the men are obliged to 
 desist, for the boat can hold no more. The her- 
 ring are piled high above the gunwales. The 
 torch illuminates the water for a few feet around 
 the bow of the boat — beyond is a wall of dark- 
 
THE LAST OF THE EDWARD S. EVELETH 
 
 THE SANDER 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 289 
 
 ness. One can often see down several feet, to 
 the sandy bottom through the clear water. 
 
 When fish are sighted, the watch calls to the 
 skipper who at once slows down the engine. 
 Sometimes a few herring are seen, sometimes im- 
 mense numbers of them, all swimming forward to- 
 wards the light. The dip-net, with a hoop about 
 three feet in diameter, is quickly plunged just be- 
 low the surface, as near the bow as may be, swept 
 rapidly aft, and, with the help of the ''turner" 
 who seizes the hoop, it is pulled up and its con- 
 tents emptied into the boat. Sometimes the net 
 contains only two or three, sometimes it is tilled 
 with herring from a few inches in length — sar- 
 dines — up to fishes a foot long. Fifteen barrels 
 of herring is a heavy load to dip out in one night, 
 but the fisherman is well repaid. 
 
 The life a light-keeper tends to independence 
 and originality of character. Many of the 
 keepers have followed the sea at one time or an- 
 other and the sea exerts a broadening iniiuence 
 in life. In the old days at Ipswich, Captain 
 Ellsworth held sway for nearly half a century, 
 and his daughter tended the range light when the 
 
290 BEACH GRASS 
 
 journey over the sands was too much for the old 
 man. His was a kindly and genial personality. 
 The picture of his ruddy cheeks and twinkling 
 blue eyes I shall always cherish. Since his death 
 over twenty years ago there has been a succession 
 of light-keepers at Ipswich, with all of whom I 
 have made acqaintance. There is always a 
 warm welcome in their cosy kitchen no matter 
 how cold and blustering the day outside. The 
 model housewife might well envy the housekeep- 
 ing of a United States light-keeper. It mattered 
 not how many children they had, nor the unex- 
 pectedness of the visit, one always found the 
 house as neat as wax, the paint immaculate — 
 not a speck of dirt or dust anywhere. The men 
 who occupied this station in the last twenty years 
 have all had interesting characteristics, and in 
 my brief visits on cold winter's days I have 
 learned many things. One of our best keepers 
 was George Howard, an all round man, a jack-of- 
 all-trades, constantly studying to improve him- 
 self, later the head light-keeper at the important 
 station of Thatcher's Island off Cape Ann. 
 
 His father, Captain Alfred A. Howard, whose 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 291 
 
 stay at Ipswich was cut short by advancement to 
 a better station, I greatly miss. He enjoyed his 
 little joke and he also appreciated it in others. 
 In the early days of the war I had dropped in to 
 see him and happened to be wearing a pair of 
 wristers I had brought from Labrador that were 
 intended for the Indian trade. They were in 
 stripes of vivid blue and red and yellow and white 
 and I remarked that I called them my ''camouflage 
 wristers." "Oh," said Mrs. Howard, "do tell 
 me what you mean by camouflage, I have seen 
 that word in the papers lately." I explained 
 that vessels were painted in alternate stripes of 
 various colors, and, at a distance on the sea, it 
 was difficult or impossible to see them, and that 
 this was called camouflage. "And," I added 
 "when I wear these wristers and get off about 
 three hundred yards, you can't see me." Her 
 face expressed great astonishment at this remark- 
 able information, but the Captain's face was calm. 
 He went at once to the pantry, soon to reappear 
 with a large piece of cake on a plate. This he 
 solemnly presented to me with the remark, "I 
 am somewhat of a liar myself I" 
 
292 BEACH GRASS 
 
 Captain Howard was as good as a Joseph 
 Lincoln story, and his supply of stories seemed 
 unending. He had had an adventurous life and 
 began young. He told me bits of it from time to 
 time, sitting by the kitchen stove in his shirt- 
 sleeves, his black eyes twinkling, while his wife, 
 who must have heard the story many times, sat 
 by with a smile on her face of full appreciation. 
 I wish I could have taken down all the finer 
 touches and expressions that he used, but I can 
 give it from memory only as follows: 
 
 "My father, who was a sea-captain, took me on 
 a trip to the West Indies when I was nine years 
 old. The next year my mother died and the 
 old man didn't take much of any notice of me 
 and didn't care when I went out whether I came 
 back or not. That was his way — so one day I 
 never did come back and I never saw the old man 
 again. 
 
 "It was this way: I lived in New York and 
 used to play around the docks and look up at 
 the big ships. They were mostly sailing-ships 
 in those days with great high, painted sides and 
 blunt rounded bows like the old battleship 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 293 
 
 Constitutiofi. They would bunt into a wave 
 and then give it up and go around. There were 
 steam vessels too, but my eyes was always for 
 the sailing vessels. On one of these of the old 
 Swallow-tail line that plied between New York 
 and London I see an officer in a shiny cap lean- 
 ing over the rail and I speaks up bold and asks 
 him if he don't want a cabin boy. 'A cabin boy,' 
 says he, 'you ain't much more'n a baby in arms 
 and we don't want none of those on this ship.' 
 I'm not so young as I look,' says I, and I lied to 
 him and says I was thirteen, when I was no more 
 than ten, 'and besides,' says I, 'I am real smart 
 and ready to do anything.' 'Go home to your 
 mother,' says he, 'and don't bother me no more; 
 we don't keep nus-girls here.' I ain't got no 
 mother, and no father neither,' I says, for I had 
 begun to lie and thought I might as well keep 
 on, 'and no home nuther.' 'Where do }ou 
 sleep ^' says he, looking at me kind o' curious-like. 
 'Oh, any old place about the dock,' I says care- 
 less-like, 'sometimes in one place and sometimes 
 in another.' 'Well,' he says, 'you can come 
 aboard and wait till the old man comes, and tell 
 
294 BEACH GRASS 
 
 your story to him and perhaps he'll make an able 
 seaman of you." 
 
 "So I shins up to the deck and the mate tells 
 me to stay quiet till the captain came. To make 
 a long story short the captain agreed to take me 
 on my homeless story, and said that if I was a 
 good boy he would pay me eight dollars a month 
 and give me three suits of clothes. 
 
 "I was so small, the cook put a soap box for me 
 to stand on in the galley so as I could reach up to 
 wash the dishes. I liked it all right and soon 
 got to feelin' at home aboard the old ship. The 
 grub was pretty poor, but then we had sea-ap- 
 petites and could eat anything. Sometimes we 
 had old horse that had been killed in the Civil 
 War. Yes, that's straight, we would get a bullet 
 in our mouths every now and then ! But the 
 ship's biscuits, they was the liveliest things — 
 why sometimes I would put one down by my mug 
 of coffee and it would walk off — not far, but 
 perhaps fourteen inches. 
 
 ''Then the cockroaches — we don't never have 
 any as big in these parts. They would come 
 aboard when we were loading ship — big enough 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 295 
 
 and strong enough if properly harnessed to drag 
 a dray of Herrick's safes. They was a great 
 nuisance on board. The cook he had bean soup 
 on Thursdays and the cockroaches got to know 
 the day and would line up on the beams of the 
 cabin when Thursdays came. The soup was in 
 a big tureen and had what the cook called floating 
 islands — hard tack. With the motion of the 
 ship, the soup and its islands would swa)' back 
 and forth and you could see them cockroaches 
 cranin' their necks and their eyes poppin' out 
 lookin' at it. Pretty soon they would begin 
 droppin' down on the islands where they would 
 sing in chorus 'A life on the ocean wave.' 
 
 'T ate the lively ship's bread but I preferred 
 the biscuits the captain had on his table, and I 
 rigged up a hook, line and sinker, and many a 
 time I have fished up through the cabin lights one 
 of them biscuits. I tried to fish up a piece of 
 squash pie but it warn't no use. 
 
 "One day the cook had biled up a mess of fine 
 potatoes for the captain's table and I wanted 
 some of it bad. The cook he had to help carry 
 the baskets of food to the captain's cabin, and. 
 
296 BEACH GRASS 
 
 when he was gone, I reached down through the 
 hatch over the galley with a long ladle used for 
 tar and scooped up quite a lot of mashed potato 
 and eat it under one of the boats. After that I 
 walks down to the galley innocent like and the 
 cook had scraped off the dark part of the potatoes 
 where I had tarred them, and put them in a plate 
 and give them to me. So I had two helps of po- 
 tatoes that day. One time when we was in at 
 New York I skinned out just as I had seen the 
 sailors do, and went to Brooklyn and stayed with 
 my aunt. There were cousins there and I had a 
 good time until I thought it was 'bout time for 
 the Cornelia to sail, so I went back. The 
 captain, he made a great blow out and took me 
 by the ear and near pulled it off, as he asked me 
 where I had been. I told him to my Aunt's, but 
 he said I had held the ship from sailing, and he 
 carried me off to the office, where they give me 
 the first money I had ever earned. Seventy-five 
 dollars! Talk about your Rockyfellers or this 
 man up on the hill — they warn't in it with me. 
 
 ''But I hated that mate, Mr. Green. He was 
 the very devil in the way he abused the men. I 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 297 
 
 have seen him kick a green horn with his big sea- 
 boots until he nearly put him out of commission. 
 It was such actions as his that were common 
 enough in those days that sickened me of going 
 to sea. I saw him murder a man once. That's 
 straight! It happened in this way. It was in 
 the night watch and I was sittin' on the upper 
 deck abaft the mainmast with a piece of tarpau- 
 lin over me to keep off the wet, for it was a thick 
 night. We was rollin' along in good style, but 
 the wind was refreshin', and the mate he called 
 the men to go aloft forward and take in sail. 
 There was an old feller aboard nigh on to seventy 
 year who they had shanghaied. He was pretty 
 feeble and the mate was always lookin' black 
 daggers at him. He was on the watch that night, 
 but the mate sung out to him to stay behind, be- 
 cause, he said to the men, the old hulk would 
 probably fall off the riggin' and get killed. 
 
 ''As soon as the men was gone he called the oKl 
 tar, and, after lettin' out a half dozen broadsides 
 of oaths and sweet names, he come to the root 
 of the matter — I was all ears under the tarfxuilin 
 — unbeknownst to either of them — and he sa^ s. 
 
298 BEACH GRASS 
 
 'Goll dong you, didn't I tell you last time I see 
 you that if ever our ways crost again I'd kill 
 you.' The old fellow pleaded pittyful, but the 
 mate he grabbed an iron belay in' pin and hit 
 him a welt over the head — I had my eyes on 'em 
 both by that time — and over the fellow went 
 on to the lower deck strikin' his head on the 
 way. 
 
 ''I didn't know what I was doin', but I rushed 
 out from my hidin' place and says 'Mr. Green 
 you've killed him for sure I' He turned like a 
 flash and grabbed me by the collar and the seat 
 of my trousers and held me over the rail. For 
 a moment I thought I was done for too, but, 
 whatever made him do it, he changed his mind 
 and pulled me back. There wasn't no one 
 'round to see what had happened and he pulled 
 me into his cabin, which was on deck — the captain 
 was down below and asleep — and he says to me, 
 he says, puttin' his face within three inches of 
 me and lookin' me straight in the eye: If you 
 dare breathe one word of this, remember you're 
 the next one.' Then he give me some terbaccer 
 — I hadn't had none, but had chewed coffee 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 299 
 
 leaves and cinnamon — and we went on deck 
 again. 
 
 "When the men came back from furl in' the 
 sail, he points out the old fellow and says as 
 how he had fallen off the upper deck with a lurch 
 of the ship. 'Carry him into the passengers' 
 galley' he says. We took passengers only on the 
 v'age from London to New York, not the other 
 way, and they had the use of the galley on the 
 port side where they cooked their food. The 
 ship's galley was on the starboard side. Well, 
 the men toted the poor wreck to the galley as 
 the mate said, and then stowed themselves as 
 much out of the wet as they could for the rest of 
 the watch. 
 
 "I stayed in the lea of the mainmast not know- 
 ing what else to do, and the mate he stomped up 
 and down on the deck. Bymby he calls to me 
 and tells me to go for'ward to the passengers' 
 galley, and see how the old cuss was. Course I 
 took the lantern out of the binacle and obeyed 
 orders, but I was scared chilly — I could smell 
 death in the air as I came to the galley, and there 
 was the cook's cat — black as a coal — mewin' like 
 
300 BEACH GRASS 
 
 all get out. The old man was lyin' where the 
 sailors had left him with his face down on his 
 arms. I catched a hold of him and managed to 
 turn him over, and .his eyes was stickin' out of 
 his head till you could see the white all round in 
 the lantern light I They was glazed I I run 
 back and says to the mate that he was gone, and 
 he says: 'Re-mem-berl' 
 
 "The next day they sewed him up in an old 
 bit of sail and put some pieces of iron at his feet 
 and laid him on a board. After the Capt'n had 
 read the prayers, he up and asks if any one knew 
 how this man come to his death. I wanted to 
 speak out but I sees the sharp, cruel eyes of Mr. 
 Green on me and I kep quiet. Then they heaved 
 the end of the board up and the body slid down 
 into the water, but it bobbed up astern three 
 times before it sunk. 
 
 "When I was in London on that trip I went 
 to see a policeman — a bobby they calls them over 
 there — that I had made acquaintance with, and I 
 says to him 'What would they do to a man who 
 killed another man?' 'How do you know he 
 did it'?' says he kinder quick and he looks at me 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 301 
 
 sharp. 'I saw him,' says I. 'Where is the mur- 
 derer?' says he, 'let me get at him.' 'He is on 
 one of the ships in the river,' I says. He didn't 
 say nothin' for a few minutes and then he said 
 ' 'Tain't no use I you're only a boy and they'd 
 never believe you in the world. You'd better say 
 nothin' to nobody.' So I kep quiet, but, you'd 
 better believe I didn't stay long on that ship. 
 
 "A good many years afterwards when I had 
 give up deep-sea sailin', and was master of a 
 iishin' boat from New York, we run in one night 
 alongside of a clipper ship and she seemed kind 
 o' familiar. Next mornin' I saw it must be the 
 old Cornelia for I knew her from stem to stern 
 and from keel to truck. I shinned up a rope and 
 said good mornin' to the officer who was on 
 deck, and told him I felt quite to home on the 
 old craft as I had sailed many trips in her some 
 years back. I asked who was the Capt'n and he 
 says: Capt'n Green, 'Oho,' says I, \ know him,' 
 and asked when he was coming aboard. He 
 says about ten o'clock. As it was then nine 
 o'clock I waited around and there sure enough 
 was the old devil, Mr. Green, comin' up the gang 
 
302 BEACH GRASS 
 
 plank. I says 'Good mornin' Capt'n Green,' civil 
 as you please, but he didn't seem to remember me. 
 I says 'You don't recolec me, Capt'n Green, but 
 may be you will after I have refreshed your 
 memory a little.' 'Go ahead,' says he, 'I don't 
 like to talk of private affairs in public,' I says. 
 So he takes me aft to his cabin and gives me a 
 strong cigar and poured out some whisky, but 
 I was not drinkin' any of that stuff. I looked 
 him in the eye and says 'You don't remember 
 me,' I says. I was a grown man then and only 
 a shaver before so of course it was natr'l he 
 shouldn't know me. 'I don't know you from the 
 devil,' says he, speaking kinder peeved. 'Well,' 
 says I, 'perhaps you can recall a night on the 
 Cornelia when you held a boy by the slack of 
 his trousers over the rail — you didn't drop him 
 and I'm that boy.' He was struck all of a heap 
 and began to talk about his family and five daugh- 
 ters and how much depended on him. 'Well,' I 
 says, 'I haven't told nobody and don't believe I 
 will but I wondered whether you had forgit me,' 
 and I said good day and cleared out sudden. 
 "That fellow died a few years ago and a New 
 
ON CERTAIN HUMANITIES 303 
 
 York paper put in a long notice as to how tine a 
 man Captain Green was and how noble a life 
 he had lead, follerin' the sea. I wanted to tell 
 that editor a thing or two, for it made me mad, 
 but I didn't." 
 
 These days of sea and shore tales at some of 
 the lighthouses on our coast are gone, never to 
 return. No longer is it possible to find refuge 
 from the winter storm, from whirling snow and 
 sand, by the cozy fireside of the light-keeper. 
 The lighthouses still stand and shed their lights 
 seaward, but the lights are impersonal, mechan- 
 ical, automatic, cold and soulless. In the march 
 of progress the government has found it possible, 
 in some places, to do without the human light- 
 keepers by using acetylene lamps which burn night 
 and day without ceasing and without tending, 
 except to be replenished at long intervals. A 
 lonely lighthouse has an appealing, human 
 quality, and hard it is to disassociate it from 
 humanity. May this mechanical fate never fall 
 on the light at Ipswich! 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACCIPITERS, 233, 238-240 
 
 Alder (Alnus incana and A. 
 
 rugosa), 1 6, 177, 213 
 Allen, Francis H., 138 
 Anoatok, 115 
 Arborvitae (Thuja occiden- 
 
 talis), 211 
 Ash, 
 
 Green (Fraxinus pennsyl- 
 vanica var, lanceolata), 
 212 
 Mountain (Pyrus ameri- 
 
 cana), 212 
 Red (F. pennsylvanica), 
 
 212 
 White (F. americana), 212 
 Audubon, John James, 183, 
 
 229 
 Auk, Great (Plautus impen- 
 
 nis), 279 
 Aurora borealis, n, 131, 132 
 
 Bald eagle (Haliaeetus 1. 
 leucocephalus), 241, 246, 
 247 
 
 Balsam fir (Abies balsamea), 
 124, 165, 211 
 
 Baldpate (Mareca ameri- 
 cana), 265 
 
 Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), 
 123, 150, 213 
 
 Barn, Ancient, 216, 217 
 
 Barn swallow roost, 194 
 Bayberry (Myrica carolinen- 
 
 sis), 16, 151, 213 
 Beach, changes in outline 4-6 
 Beach grass (Ammophila are^ 
 
 naria), 3, 6, 16, 22, 27, 
 
 123. 
 Beach in winter, 80-94 
 Beach plum (Prunus mari- 
 
 tima), 134, 166, 213 
 Bearberry (Archtostaphylos 
 
 uva-ursi), 7 
 Beech (Fagus grandifolia), 
 
 170, 212 
 
 Birch, 
 
 Canoe (Betula alba var, 
 
 papyrifera), 125, 212 
 Gray or white (B. populi- 
 folia), 16, 31, 124, 129, 
 164, 212 
 Red (B. nigra), 7 
 Sweet (B. lenta), 212 
 Yellow (B. lutea), 212 
 Bird bath in dew, 198 
 Bird boxes, 215 
 Bird calls, 11, 15, 16, 18, 180, 
 
 181, 184 
 Bird protection, 34 
 Bittern (Botaurus lentigino- 
 
 sus), 178, 179, 262 
 Bitter-sweet (Celastrus scan- 
 dens), 213 
 
 307 
 
3o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Blackberry (Rubus), 213 
 Black guillemot (Cepphus 
 
 grylle), 262 
 Blackbird, Red-winged (Age- 
 
 laius p. phceniceus), 185 
 Black walnut (Juglans nigra), 
 
 211 
 
 Blood-root (Sanguinaria cana- 
 densis), 170 
 Bluebird (Sialia s. sialis), 186, 
 
 264 
 Blue jay (Cyanocitta c. cris- 
 
 tata), 237 
 Bobolink (Dolichonyx ory- 
 zivorus), 182, 185, 269 
 Bob-white, (Colinus v. vir- 
 
 ginianus), 178 
 Bonaventure Island, 266 
 Box elder, see Maple, Ash- 
 leaved 
 Brewster, William, 154, r(>6, 
 
 171, 258 
 Bronzed grackle, (Quiscalus 
 quiscula aeneus), i95-i97> 
 263, 264, 271 
 Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma 
 
 rufum), 30, 187 
 Briinnich's Murre (Uria 1. 
 
 lomvia), 155 
 Buffle-head (Charitonetta al- 
 
 beola), 265 
 Bushes and vines of forest, 
 
 212, 213 
 Buteos, 233, 236, 237 
 Butternut (Juglans cinerea), 
 
 211 
 Buttonbush (Cephalanthus oc- 
 cidentalis), 7 
 
 Buttonwood (Platanus occi- 
 dentalis), 123, 212 
 
 Camp in dunes, 38, 39, 40 
 Candlemas Day, 63, 64 
 Castle Hill, 7> 8, 84, 89, 136, 
 
 139, 147 
 Catbird (Dumetella carolinen- 
 
 sis), 182, i86, 187, 198 
 Cat brier (Smilax rotundi- 
 
 folia), 150 
 Caterpillar, 
 
 Gypsy (Ocneria dispar), 
 
 174 
 Wooly-bear (Arctiidae), 78, 
 
 79 
 Cedar, 
 
 Red (Juniperus virgin- 
 
 iana), 150, 164, 165, 
 
 211 
 
 White (Chamaecyparis 
 
 thyoides), 200, 211 
 
 Chat, Yellow-breasted (Icteria 
 
 v. virens), 272 
 Cherry, 
 
 Choke (Prunus virginiana), 
 
 212 
 Wild black (P. serotina), 
 
 129, 212 
 Wild red (P. pennsylvan- 
 ica), 212 
 Chestnut (Castanea dentata), 
 
 170, 171 
 Chewink (Pipilo e. ery- 
 
 throphthalmus), 30 
 Chickadee (Penthestes a. at- 
 ricapillus), 118, 174, 175> 
 198 
 
INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 Clam, 
 
 (Common Mya arenaria),39 
 Sea (Spisula solidissima), 
 
 39 
 Climate, Changes of, 80-83, 
 
 132-134 
 Courtship in birds, 248-276 
 Courtship of 
 
 baldpate, 265 
 
 bittern, 262 
 
 black duck, 262, 265 
 
 black guillemot, 262 
 
 bluebird, 264 
 
 blue-headed vireo, 262, 264 
 
 bobolink, 269 
 
 bronzed grackle, 263, 264 
 271 
 
 buffle-head, 265 
 
 chat, 272 
 
 cowbird, 264 
 
 eider, 261, 275 
 
 flicker, 275 
 
 gannet, 265-269 
 
 golden-eye, 262, 263, 264 
 
 heath hen, 262, 272, 273 
 
 horned lark, 270 
 
 kingbird, 272 
 
 Laysan albatross, 265 
 
 marsh hawk, 272 
 
 mallard, 265 
 
 Maryland yellow-throat, 
 
 269 
 
 merganser, 262, 265 
 
 myrtle warbler, 262 
 
 nighthawk, 271, 272 
 
 orchard oriole, 269 
 
 oven-bird, 269 
 
 peacock, 259, 260 
 
 pheasant, 270 
 
 pigeon, 262, 271 
 
 pintail, 265 
 
 pipit, 270 
 
 ptarmigan, 270 
 
 raven, 272 
 
 red-winged blackbird, 262 
 
 ruffed grouse, 271 
 
 Savannah sparrow, 271 
 
 scaup, 265 
 
 semipalmated sandpiper, 
 
 269 
 song sparrow, 270 
 spruce partridge, 270 
 terns, 37, 38 
 upland plover, 270 
 vesper sparrow, 271 
 Wilson's snipe, 274, 275 
 woodcock, 274 
 Cowbird (Molothrus a. ater), 
 
 264 
 Cranberry (Vaccinium ma- 
 
 crocarpon), 6 
 Cricket 
 
 Field (Gryllus assimilis), 
 
 202 
 Snowy-tree (CEcanthus ni- 
 veus), 201, 202 
 Cricket thermometer, 13, 201 
 Crossbill (Loxia curvirostra 
 minor), 183 
 White-winged (L. leucop- 
 tera), 118, 183 
 Crow (Corvus b. brachyrhyn- 
 chos), 75, 76, 135-161, 182, 
 
 194, 195 
 blind 131 
 dead, 129, 130, 154 
 
310 
 
 INDEX 
 
 flights to and from the 
 
 roost, 137-144, 146, 149, 
 
 150 
 food, 150, 151, 152, 156-161 
 hopping and gliding, 75, 76 
 numbers, 140, 141, 143, 144, 
 
 146, 150 
 pellets, 156-161 
 roost, 135-161 
 speed of flight, 141 
 Cuckoo 
 Black-billed (Coccyzus ery- 
 
 throphthalmus), 177, 
 
 178 
 Yellow-billed (C. a. ameri- 
 
 canus), 178 
 Currant (Ribes), 134 
 
 Damage to trees by mice and 
 
 RABBITS, 128 
 
 Dame Juliana Bernes, 183 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 229, 250 
 
 Deer, White-tailed or Vir- 
 ginia (Odocoileus vigi- 
 nianus borealis), 41-48, 
 200 
 
 Dew, n, 198 
 
 Dog's-tooth violet (Erythro- 
 nium americanum), 170 
 
 Dogwood, Flowering (Cornus 
 florida), 212 
 
 Duck, Black (Anas r. rub- 
 ripes), 129, 180, 262, 265 
 
 Dunes, angle of, 2 
 cirque or amphitheatre, 3, 
 
 4, 96 
 desert, 2, 3, 96 
 eagle, 28, 44 
 
 "glacier," 2 
 nunatak, 4 
 
 rate of advance, 3, 95 
 "Vendome," 3, 46 
 Dusty miller (Arteraesia Stel- 
 leriana), 7 
 
 Eclipse of sky, 10 
 
 Eclipse plumage, 258 
 
 Eel (Anguilla chrisypa), 282 
 
 Eeler, 233-285 
 
 Eelgrass (Zostera marina), 
 
 16, 282 
 Egret (Herodias egretta), 26, 
 
 27 
 Eider (Somateria mollissima 
 
 dresseri), 261, 275 
 Elder (Sambucus canadensis), 
 
 213 
 Elm (Ulmus americana), 125, 
 
 165, 212 
 English game-keeper, 230, 
 
 238 
 Eskimo, 103, 115 
 Eveleth, The Edivard S., 286, 
 
 287 
 
 Falconry, 227, 228 
 Falcons, 233, 234, 235 
 Fisher, W. K., 265 
 Flicker (Colaptes auratus lu- 
 
 teus), 185 
 Flycatcher, Yellow-bellied 
 
 (Empidonax flaviventris), 
 172 
 Forest 
 The, 162-213 
 birds, 172-199 
 
INDEX 
 
 311 
 
 bushes and vines, 212, 213 
 
 census of trees, i68, 169 
 
 ferns, 208 
 
 lean-to, 171, 172 
 
 mammals, 199-201 
 
 odors, 206, 207 
 
 path in darkness, 193, 203, 
 204 
 
 planting, 164, 165 
 
 rain, 202, 204, 205 
 
 snow, 204, 205 
 
 sounds, 201, 202, 205 
 
 trees, list of, 211, 212 
 
 views, 203 
 
 wild flowers, 170, 207 
 
 wood-cutting, 208-211 
 Fox, Red (Vulpes fulvus), 
 
 49-61, 199 
 Frost cracks in dunes, 5^ 83 
 Frost-rime, 91-94 
 
 Gannet (Sula bassana), 244, 
 
 245, 265-269 
 Girdling of trees by mice, 128 
 Glacial kettles, 99, 100, loi 
 Gliding, 242 
 Golden-eye (Clangula clan- 
 
 gula americana), 262, 263, 
 
 264 
 Goldenrod, Maritime, (Soli- 
 dago sempervirens), 
 123 
 Goldfinch (Astragalinus t. 
 
 tristis), 22, 185 
 Goose, Canada (Branta c. 
 
 canadensis), 24, 25 
 Gooseberry, Wild (Ribes oxy- 
 
 canthoides), 213 
 
 Goshawk (Astur a. atrica- 
 
 pillus), 239 
 Grape, 
 
 Fox (Vitis labusca), 213 
 Frost (V. vulpina), 213 
 Grass bird (Pisobia macu- 
 
 lata), 235 
 Grasshopper, Seaside (Trim- 
 
 erotropis maritima), 27 
 Grosbeak, 
 
 Evening (Hesperiphona v. 
 
 vespertina), 183, 184 
 Pine (Pinicola enucleator 
 leucura), 183 
 Ground hog, see Woodchuck 
 Groundnut (Apios tuberosa), 
 
 213 
 Grouse, Ruffed (Bonasa u. 
 
 umbellus), 271 
 Gull, 
 
 Great black-backed (Larus 
 
 marinus), 91 
 Herring (L. argentatus), 
 lo, 22, 246 
 Gurney, J. H,, 266 
 
 Hackberry (Celtis occiden- 
 
 talis), 212 
 Hardback (Spiraea tomen- 
 
 tosa), 213 
 Hawk, 
 
 Broad-winged (Buteo pla- 
 
 typterus), 236 
 Cooper's (Accipiter cooperi), 
 
 238, 239 
 Duck (Falco perigrinus 
 anatum), 22, 235, 236, 
 246 
 
312 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Fish (Pandion haliaetus 
 
 carolinensis), 241 
 Marsh (Circus hudsonius), 
 
 193, 194, 240, 241, 
 246 
 Pigeon (Falco c. columbar- 
 
 ius), 235 
 Red-shouldered (Buteo 1. 
 
 lineatus), 236, 237 
 Red-tailed (B. b. borealis), 
 
 236, 237 
 Rough-legged (Archibuteo 
 
 lagopus sancti-johannis), 
 
 237, 238, 244 
 Sharp-shinned (Accipiter 
 
 velox), 238, 239 
 Sparrow (Falco s. sparver- 
 
 ius), 234 
 Sparrow, European (Accipi- 
 ter nisus), 22 
 Hawks 
 
 Field identification of, 232- 
 
 234 
 Soaring of, 230, 231, 241- 
 244, 246, 247. 
 Hawking, 227-247 
 Hazel (Corylus americana), 
 
 213 
 
 Heartbreak Hill, 115, 135 
 Heath hen (Tympanuchus 
 
 cupido), 262, 272, 273 
 Hemlodk (Tsuga canadensis), 
 
 211 
 
 Hepatica (Hepatica triloba), 
 
 170 
 Heron, 
 
 Black-crowned night (Nyc- 
 ticorax nycticorax nae- 
 
 vius), 10, 31, 32, 33, 58, 
 180 
 Great blue (Ardea h. her- 
 odias), 76 
 Heronry, 31, 32, 33 
 Herring (Clupea harengus), 
 
 288, 289 
 Herring-torching 288, 289 
 Hickory, Bitternut (Carya 
 
 cordiformis), 2H 
 Hobble-bush (Viburnum alni- 
 
 folium), 212 
 Hog Island, 121 
 Hornbeam (Carpinus caro- 
 liniana), 211 
 Hop (Ostrya virginiana), 
 211 
 Horned lark (Otocoris a. al- 
 
 pestris), 73 
 Howard, 
 
 Captain Alfred A., 83, 290 
 his story, 292-303 
 Howard, H. Eliot, 252 
 Howard, George, 290 
 Hudson, W. H., 230 
 Hudsonia (Hudsonia tomen- 
 
 tosa), 7 
 Hummingbird, Ruby-throated 
 (Archilochus colubris), 
 188-190 
 Humanities, 277-303 
 
 Ice 
 
 arches in marsh, 107 
 booming of, 1 1 6 
 boulders carried by, 84, 85 
 crystals, 93, 94, 126 
 cobblestone, 88' 
 
INDEX 
 
 313 
 
 conglomerate, 88 
 
 floe, 90, 91 
 
 foot, 84 
 
 formations in salt marshes, 
 102-110 
 
 formations on the beach and 
 sea, 80-94 
 
 grottos, 86 
 
 lolly, 90 
 
 pancake, 90 
 
 prismatic colors of, 126 
 
 slob, 87, 90 
 
 storm, 120-127 
 
 wall, 85-88 
 Ice and snow in the sand 
 
 dunes, 95-101 
 Indians, 132, 277, 282 
 Instinct, 249 
 Isles of Shoales, 8 
 
 JUNCO (Junco hyemalis), 21 
 Juniper, Low (Juniperus com- 
 munis var, depressa), 213 
 
 Kestrel (Tinnunculus alau- 
 
 darius), 228 
 Kingbird (Tyrannus tyran- 
 
 nus), 179, 272 
 Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon), 
 
 182 
 Kinglet, Golden-crowned (Re 
 
 gulus s. satrapa), 118' 
 Koolatuk, 103, 104 
 
 Labor-in-vain creek, 115 
 Labrador, 16, 23, 90 
 Lady's slipper (Cypripedium 
 acaule), 208 
 
 Lapland longspur (Calcarius 
 
 1. laponicus), 73 
 Laysan albatross (Diomedia 
 
 immutabilis), 265 
 Larch (Larix laricina), 170, 
 
 211 
 Light-keepers, 289, 290 
 Lillienthal, 76 
 Linden (Tilia americana), 125 
 
 212 
 Locust (Robinia Pseudo-Aca- 
 cia), 200, 212 
 Clammy (R. viscosa), 212 
 Loon (Gavia immer), lo, 51 
 
 MacMillan, Donald G., 104 
 Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), 
 
 265 
 Maple, 
 Ash-leaved (Acer negundo), 
 
 183, 212 
 Mountain (A. spicatum), 
 
 212 
 
 Red (A. rubrum), 212 
 Striped (A. pennsylvani- 
 
 Cum), 212 
 
 Sugar (A. saccharum), 212 
 White (A. saccharinum), 
 31, 125, 165, 212 
 Maryland yellow-throat (Geo- 
 thlypis t. trichas), 18, 30, 
 173, 176, 179, 198 
 Maynard, Charles J., 34 
 Meadowlark (Sturnella m. 
 
 magna), no, 133, 182 
 Meadowsweet (Spiraea salici- 
 
 folia), 213 
 Merganser 
 
314 
 
 INDEX 
 
 American (Mergus ameri- 
 
 canus), 262 
 Red-breasted (M. serrator), 
 91, 265 
 Merula Farm, 190 
 Migration of birds, 11, 14, 17, 
 
 180, i8i 
 Mirage, 8 
 
 Mistaken diagnosis, 279, 280 
 Moonlight 
 
 in the dunes, 13, 14 
 in ice-covered marshes, 
 106 
 Morning awakening of birds, 
 
 177, i8i, 182 
 Mouse, 
 
 Field or meadow (Micro- 
 tus pennsylvanicus), 30, 
 127, 128, 129 
 Jumping (Zapus hudsoni- 
 
 us), 30, 68 
 White-footed (Peromyscus 
 leucopus noveboracen- 
 cis), 30, 51 
 Mt. Agamenticus 8 
 Muir, John, 100 
 Muslkrat (Fiber zibeticus), 61, 
 
 62 
 Myopia Club hunt, 167, 168 
 Myrtle berry, see Bayberry 
 
 Nelson, E. W., 31, 158 
 Nighthawk (Chordeiles v. vir- 
 
 ginianus), 271, 277 
 Nights in the dunes, 9-16, 23, 
 
 24 
 Night singing of birds, 177, 
 
 178, 179 
 
 Nuthatch, Red-breasted (Sitta 
 canadensis), ii8 
 
 Oak, 
 Bur (Quercus macrocarpa), 
 
 212 
 Chestnut (Q. Prinus), 212 
 English (Q. Robur var. 
 
 pedunculata), 116 
 Red (Q rubra), 7, 213 
 Scarlet (Q. coccinea) 212 
 Scrub (Q. ilicifolia), 165 
 Swamp white (Q. bicolor), 
 
 212 
 White (Q. alba), 212 
 Odors, 52 
 Oriole, 
 Baltimore (Icterus gal- 
 
 bula), 185 
 Orchard (I. spurius), 269 
 Osprey, see Hawk, Fish 
 Osier, Red (Cornus stoloni- 
 
 fera), 212 
 Oven-bird (Seiurus aurocapil- 
 
 lus), 269 
 Owl 
 
 Great horned (Bubo v. vir- 
 
 ginianus), 147 
 Long-eared (Asio wilson- 
 
 ianus), 29, 30, 31 
 Screech (Otus a. asio), 180 
 Short-eared (Asio flam- 
 
 meus), 27 
 Snowy (Nyctea nyctea), 28, 
 29 
 Oyster (Ostrea virginica), 281 
 
 Partridge, Spruce (Canachi- 
 
INDEX 
 
 315 
 
 tes canadensis canace), 
 270 
 Peacock (Pavo cristatus), 259, 
 
 260 
 Peregrine falcon (Falco pere- 
 
 grinus), 228 
 Pheasant, Ring-necked (Pha- 
 
 sianus torquatus), 61, 
 
 114, 133, 176, 270 
 Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), 
 
 185 
 Pigeon, Domestic (Columba 
 
 domestica), 262, 271 
 Pine, 
 Banksian (Pinus Banksiana), 
 
 211 
 
 Pitch (P. rigida), 2, 6, 31, 
 
 64, 170, 211 
 Red (P. resinosa), 165, 170, 
 
 211 
 White (P. Strobus), 124, 
 165, 166, 211 
 Pine siskin (Spinus pinus), 
 
 183 
 Pintail (Dafila acuta), 265 
 Pipit (Anthus rubescens), i6, 
 
 22, 270 
 Play 
 
 in cottontail rabbits, 199, 
 
 200 
 in starlings, 145 
 in swallows, 223, 224 
 Pleasure 
 
 -Esthetic, 229 
 Intellectual, 228, 229 
 Plover, 
 
 Black-bellied (Squatarola 
 squatarola), 70 
 
 Piping (y^gialitis meloda), 
 
 27 
 Ring-necked (^^. semipal- 
 
 mata), 15 
 Upland (Bartramia longi- 
 cauda), 270 
 Poison ivy (Rhus Toxicoden- 
 dron), 17, 150, 213 
 Poplar, Aspen (Populus tre- 
 
 muloides), 125, 211 
 Ptarmigan, Willow (Lagopus 
 
 1. lagopus), 270 
 Purple finch (Carpodacus p. 
 
 purpureus), 22, 185 
 Pycraft W. P., 252 
 
 Queen Anne's lace (Daucus 
 Carota), 225 
 
 Rabbit, Cotton-tail (Sylvila- 
 gus transitionalis), 54 
 65-67, 127-129, 199, 200 
 
 Rain-in-the Face, Chief, 114 
 
 Rain drops on the sand, 69 
 
 Rat, Norway (Rattus nove- 
 gicus), (y-j 
 
 Rattlesnake plantain (Epi- 
 pactis pubescens), 208 
 
 Raven, Northern (Corvus co- 
 rax principalis), 246, 272 
 
 Reason, 249 
 
 Redpoll (Acanthis 1. linaria), 
 183 
 
 Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla), 
 18, 20 
 
 Reflex action, 249 
 
 Rhodora (Rhodora cana- 
 dense), 7, 213 
 
3i6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ripple-marks, i 
 
 Robin (Planesticus m. migra- 
 
 torius), 21, 182, 190-193 
 Robin roost, 190-193 
 Rose, Wild (Rosa Carolina, 
 
 R. nitida), 17, 213 
 
 Sagamore Hill, 8, 121 
 Sagamore Pond, n6, i2i 
 Salt marshes, Ice formation in, 
 
 I02-II0 
 
 Sand and Ice formations, 97, 
 
 98 
 Sand dunes. 
 
 Days and nights In, 1-40 
 in winter, 95-101 
 Tracks in, 41-79 
 Sander, 285-287 
 Sanderling (Calidris leuco- 
 
 phsea), 15, 69 
 Sassafras (Sassafras variifo- 
 
 lium), 212 
 Saunders, F. A., 130, 155 
 Scaup (Marila marila), 265 
 Scoresby, Captain William, 90 
 
 Scoters (Oidemia), 236 
 
 Seal, Harbor (Phoca vitulina), 
 
 70-73, 90 
 Sexual selection, 250-258 
 Shad bush (Amelanchler 
 
 canadensis), 164, 212 
 Shell heaps, 278-281 
 Short cuts, 117 
 Shrew, Short-tailed (Blarina 
 
 brevicauda), 30 
 Shrike, Northern (Lanius bo- 
 
 realis), 182, 183 
 
 Siskin, Pine (Spinus pinus), 
 
 183 
 Skunk (Mephitis putida), 13, 
 
 51, 69 
 Snipe, Wilson's (Gallinago 
 
 delicata), 274, 275 
 Snow bunting (Plectrophenax 
 
 n. nivalis), 29, 73 
 Snowfall, 8i, 82 
 Soaring, 241-247 
 Soul and body lashing, 104 
 Sparrow, 
 
 Chipping (Spizella p. pu- 
 
 silla), 30, 177, 185 
 Fox (Passerella iliaca), 
 
 184 
 Henslow's (Passerherbulus 
 
 h. henslowi), 275 
 Ipswich (Passerculus prin- 
 
 ceps), 27 
 Savannah (P. sandwichen- 
 sis savanna), -22, 30, 
 185 
 Sharp-tailed (Passerherbu- 
 lus caudacutus), 30 
 Song (Melospiza m. me- 
 lodia), 30, 173, 177, 
 185 
 Vesper (PocEcetes g. gra- 
 
 mineus), 30, 185 
 White-throated (Zonotri- 
 chia albicolis), 22, 184 
 271 
 Spraying of trees, 174, 175 
 Spring, early and late, 134 
 Spruce, 
 Black (Picea mariana), 170, 
 
 211 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 Red (P. rubra), 170, 211 
 White (P. canadensis), 170, 
 211 
 Squirrel, Gray (Sciurus caroli- 
 
 nensis leucotis), 199 
 Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), 
 
 144, 145, 150, 193 
 Starvation of birdS; 129, 130, 
 
 152 
 Stickleback, Three-spined 
 
 (Gasteosteus aculeatus), 
 197 
 Sumach, 
 
 Smooth (Rhus glabra), 212 
 Staghorn (R. typhina), 17, 
 123, 150, 151, 212 
 Swallows at work and play, 
 
 214-226 
 Swallow, 
 Bank (Riparia riparia), 22, 
 
 223, 224 
 Barn (Hirundo erythro- 
 gastra), 12, 22, 74, 194, 
 215-218, 221-226 
 Eave (Petrochelidon 1. luni- 
 
 frons), 222, 223, 224 
 Tree (Iridoprocne bicolor), 
 n, 22, 74, 173, 181, 
 182, 215, 219, 220, 
 223-226 
 Swallow cave, 215 
 
 Taverner, p. a., 265 
 Tern, 
 
 Arctic (Sterna paradisaea), 
 
 34 
 Common (S. hirundo), 
 34-38 
 
 Roseate (S. cougalli), 34, 
 36, 37, 38 
 Thayer, Abbott H,, 67 
 Thoreau, Henry D., 70, 201, 
 
 229 
 Thorn (Crataegus), 212 
 Thrush 
 
 Bicknell's (Hylocichla ali- 
 
 ciae bicknelli), 21 
 Gray-cheeked (H. a. ali- 
 
 ciae), 21 
 Hermit (H. guttata pallasi), 
 
 ^ 79, 275 
 Olive-backed (H. ustulata 
 swainsoni), 21 
 Thurlow, Captain, 283-285 
 Tiercel, 239 
 Toad (Bufo americanus), 13, 
 
 27, 1(>, 77 
 Tracks of 
 cat, 68, 69 
 crow, 51, 75 
 deer, 41-48 
 dog, 49 
 fox, 49-61, 69 
 ground hog, 62-65 
 horned lark, 73 
 herons, 76 
 herring gull, 74 
 insects, 77-79 
 Lapland longspur, 73 
 mouse, jumping, 68 
 
 white-footed, 12, 78 
 muskrat, 61, 62 
 plover, 69, 70, 74 
 rabbit, 65-67 
 rat, e^ 
 sanderling, 69 
 
3i8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 sandpipers, 70 
 seal, 70-72 
 skunk, 13, 51, 69 
 snow bunting, 73 
 sparrows, 74 
 swallows, 73, 74 
 toad, 13, 76, 77 
 woodchuck, 62-65 
 wooly-bear caterpillar, 78, 
 
 79 
 Treadwell's Island, 280 
 Trees of forest, 211, 212 
 Trumpet creeper (Tecoma ra- 
 
 dicans), 213 
 Trumpet creeper and hum- 
 mingbirds, 188-190 
 Tulip tree (Liriodendron 
 
 Tulipifera), 212 
 Tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica), 212 
 Turkey, Wild (Meleagris gal- 
 
 lopavo silvestris), 279 
 Turnstone, Ruddy (Arenaria 
 
 interpres morinella), 15 
 Tyler, Dr. W. M., 139, 150 
 
 Up-currents of air, 242-244 
 Uplands in winter, in-134 
 
 Veery (Hylocichla f. fusce- 
 
 scens), 21 
 Vendome dune, 3 
 Vermin, 230, 238 
 Viburnum, 
 
 Arrow- wood (Viburnum 
 
 dentatum), 212 
 Maple-leaf (V. acerifoHum), 
 
 213 
 Sweet (V. Lentago), 213 
 
 Withe-rod (V. casGinoides), 
 
 213 
 Vireo, 
 Red-eyed (Vireosylva oli- 
 
 vacea), 188 
 Solitary or blue-headed 
 (Lanivireo s. solitar- 
 ius), 21, 262, 264 
 
 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 229 
 Warbler, 
 
 Bay-breasted (Dendroica 
 
 castanea), 19 
 Black-poll (D. striata), 17 
 Bladk-throated blue (D. c. 
 
 caerulescens), 18 
 Black-throated green (D. 
 
 virens), 18 
 Cape May (D. tigrina), 19, 
 
 20 
 Magnolia (D. magnolia), 
 
 18, 20, 184 
 Myrtle (D. coronata), 17, 
 
 129, 184, 262 
 Nashville (Vermivora r. 
 
 rubricapilla), 18 
 Parula (Compsothlypis 
 
 amerlcana usneae), 18 
 Pine (D. vigorsi), 30 
 Tennessee (Vermivora pere- 
 
 grina), i8, 19 
 Yellow (D. ae. aestiva), 173 
 Warblers, Group of, 20, 21. 
 Water-holes, 49, 50 
 Weasel, Little brown (Mus- 
 
 tela cicognani), 200 
 Waxwing, Cedar (Bomby- 
 cilla cedrorum), 186 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 Whistler, see Golden-eye 
 White, Gilbert, 230 
 Wigwam Hill, 29, 33, 64 
 Willow, Ancient, 7, 8 
 Willow, White (Salix alba 
 
 var vitellina), 211 
 Wilson, Alexander, 229 
 Wind, Sounds of, 115 
 Winterbery (Ilex verticil- 
 
 lata), 213 
 Winthrop the younger, 8 
 Witch hazel (Hammamelis 
 
 virginiana), 165, 213 
 Woodbine (Psedera quinque- 
 
 folia), 213 
 Wood chopping, 208-211 
 Woodchuck (Marmotta mon- 
 
 ax preblorum), 62-65 
 Woodcock (Philohela minor), 
 
 177, 274 
 Wreck of Ed^'jard S. Eveleth, 
 
 287 
 
 Yellow-legs, Greater (To- 
 tanus melanoleucus), 70, 
 179, 180. 
 
 Yew (Taxus canadensis), 213 
 
HECKMAN 
 
 BINDERY INC. 
 
 JAN 93 
 
 N. MANCHESTER, 
 INDIANA 46962