oison from the flowers, or else, and more likely, they had been unable to
free their long-haired antennae from the sticky honey into which they had
dipped their innocent beaks. Several single flowers had trapped three, and
from one blossom I picked out five. If we could bring the dogbane to brew
a cup which would be fatal to the females, it might be a good plant to
raise in our gardens along with the eucalyptus and the castor-oil plants.

Everywhere as I went along, from every stake, every stout weed and topping
bunch of grass, trilled the seaside sparrows--a weak, husky, monotonous
song, of five or six notes, a little like the chippy's, more tuneful,
perhaps, but not so strong. They are dark, dusky birds, of a grayish
olive-green hue, with a conspicuous yellow line before the eye, and
yellow upon the shoulder.

There seems to be a sparrow of some kind for every variety of land between
the poles. Mountain-tops, seaside marshes, inland prairies, swamps, woods,
pastures--everywhere, from Indian River to the Yukon, a sparrow nests. Yet
one can hardly associate sparrows with marshes, for they seem out of place
in houseless, treeless, half-submerged stretches. These are the haunts of
the shyer, more secretive birds. Here the ducks, rails, bitterns,
coots,--birds that can wade and swim, eat frogs and crabs,--seem naturally
at home. The sparrows are perchers, grain-eaters, free-fliers, and
singers; and they, of all birds, are the friends and neighbors of man.
This is no place for them. The effect of this marsh life upon the flight
and song of these two species was very marked. Both showed unmistakable
vocal powers which long ago would have been developed under the stimulus
of human listeners; and during all my stay (so long have they crept and
skulked about through the low marsh paths) I did not see one rise a
hundred feet into the air, nor fly straight away for a hundred yards.
They would get up just above the grass, and flutter and drop--a puttering,
short-winded, apoplectic struggle, very unbecoming and unworthy.

By noon I had completed a circle and recrossed the lighthouse road in the
direction of the bay. A thin sheet of lukewarm water lay over all this
section. The high spring tides had been reinforced by unusually heavy
rains during April and May, giving a great area of pasture and hay land
back, for that season, to the sea. Descending a copsy dune from the road,
I surprised a brood of young killdeers feeding along the