per was teetering
along the edge of the water, and the next moment a big blue heron rose
just beyond him and went flapping away to the middle of the marsh. Now,
an hour afterward, he is still standing there, towering above the tall
grass. Once when I turned that way I saw, as I thought, a stake, and
then something moved upon it,--a bird of some kind. And what an enormous
beak! I raised my field-glass. It was the heron. His body was the post,
and his head was the bird. Meanwhile, the sandpiper has stolen away, I
know not when or where. He must have omitted the _tweet, tweet_, with
which ordinarily he signalizes his flight. He is the first of his kind
that I have seen during my brief stay in these parts.

Now a multitude of crows pass over; fish crows, I think they must be,
from their small size and their strange, ridiculous voices. And now a
second great blue heron comes in sight, and keeps on over the marsh and
over the live-oak wood, on his way to the San Sebastian marshes, or some
point still more remote. A fine show he makes, with his wide expanse of
wing, and his feet drawn up and standing out behind him. Next a marsh
hawk in brown plumage comes skimming over the grass. This way and that
he swerves in ever graceful lines. For one to whom ease and grace come
by nature, even the chase of meadow mice is an act of beauty, while
another goes awkwardly though in pursuit of a goddess.

Several times I have noticed a kingfisher hovering above the grass (so
it looks, but no doubt he is over an arm of the creek), striking the air
with quick strokes, and keeping his head pointed downward, after the
manner of a tern. Then he disappeared while I was looking at something
else. Now I remark him sitting motionless upon the top of a post in the
midst of the marsh.

A third blue heron appears, and he too flies over without stopping.
Number One still keeps his place; through the glass I can see him
dressing his feathers with his clumsy beak. The lively strain of a
white-eyed vireo, pertest of songsters, comes to me from somewhere on my
right, and the soft chipping of myrtle warblers is all but incessant. I
look up from my paper to see a turkey buzzard sailing majestically
northward. I watch him till he fades in the distance. Not once does he
flap his wings, but sails and sails, going with the wind, yet turning
again and again to rise against it,--helping himself thus to its
adverse, uplifting pressure in the place of wing-strokes, p