all these lawn birds are the
ring-necked plovers, or killdeers. Think of having a half-dozen or more
of those wild, shapely creatures, reminiscent of the shore and of the
spirit of the tender, glancing April days, running over your lawn but a
few yards from you! Their dovelike heads, their long, slender legs, that
curious, mechanical jerking up-and-down movement of their bodies, their
shrill, disconsolate cries as they take flight, their beautiful and
powerful wings and tail, and their mastery of the air--all arrest your
attention or challenge your admiration. They bring the distant and the
furtive to your very door. All climes and lands wait upon their wings.
They fly around the world.

The plovers are the favored among birds. Beauty, speed, and immunity
from danger from birds of prey are theirs. Ethereal and aerial
creatures! Is that the cry of the sea in the bird's voice? Is that the
motion of the waves in its body? Is that the restlessness of the surf in
its behavior?

However high and far it may fly, it has to come back to earth as we all
do. It comes to our lawn to feed upon earthworms. The other birds are
all busy picking up some minute fly or insect that harbors in the grass,
but the plover is here for game that harbors in the turf. His methods
are like those of the robin searching for grubs or angle-worms. He
scrutinizes the turf very carefully as he runs about over it, making
frequent drives into it with his bill, but only now and then seizing the
prey of which he is in search. When he does so, he shows the same
judgment which the robin does under like conditions. He pulls slowly and
evenly, so as to make sure of the whole worm, or to compel it to let go
its hold upon the soil without breaking. All birds are wise about their
food-supplies.

On the beach the wild life that I see is all on wings. There are the
tranquil, effortless gliding herring gulls, snow-white beneath and
pearl-gray above, displaying an affluence of wing-power restful to look
upon--airplanes that put forth their powers so subtly and so silently as
to elude both eye and ear. At low tide I see large groups of their white
and gray-blue forms seated upon the dark, moss-covered rocks. Fresh
water is at a premium on this coast, and the thirsty gulls avail
themselves of the makeshift of the drain-pipes from the town, which
discharge on the beach.

There are the clumsy-looking but powerful-winged birds, the brown
pelicans, usually in a line of