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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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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