II

About the middle of December, I began to see that an amusing game of

cross purposes was being played by the sea birds and the land birds of

the region west of the dunes. Food becoming scarce upon the uplands,

crows, bobwhites, and starlings began to take an interest in the sea

and the salt meadows, while gulls took to exploring the moors and to

sitting in the top branches of inland pines. One wise old gull once

discovered that there was good fare to be had in Mr. Joe Cobb’s chicken

yard just off the western rim of the great marsh, and every morning

this sagacious creature would separate himself from the thousands

milling about over the cold tides and flutter down among the hens.

There he would forage about, picking up grain like a barnyard fowl till

he had dulled the edge of his hunger. I doubt if gulls ever do more.

After visiting the chicken yard regularly for several winters, the bird

disappeared one spring and was never seen again. He had probably lived

out the span of his days.

I pause here to wonder at how little we know of the life span of wild

animals. Only cases of exceptionally long life or short life seem

to attract the attention of man. I can open any good bird book and

find a most careful, a most detailed study of the physical selves and

habits of birds, but of their probable length of life, never a word.

Such material would be exceedingly difficult to secure, and perhaps

the suggestion is folly, but there are times when one wishes that this

neglected side of animal existence might have more attention.

During the summer, I never saw starlings on the marsh, but now that

winter is here they leave the uplands by the coast guard station, and

venture out along the dunes. These flights of exploration are very

rare. I have seen the birds flying over the salt meadows, I have seen

them light on the ridgepole of a gunning camp, but I have never once

encountered them on the outer beach. With crows, it is a different

story. The birds will investigate anything promising, and during the

summer I found crows on the beach on four or five different occasions,

these visits being made, for the most part, early in the morning.

Chancing to look toward the marsh one warm October afternoon, I

witnessed a battle between two gulls and a young crow for the

possession of some marine titbit the crow had picked up on the flats;

it was a picturesque contest, for the great silvery wings of the gulls

beat down and inclosed the crow till he resembled a junior demon in

some old lithograph of the war in heaven. Eventually one of the gulls

seized on the coveted morsel, flew off a bit, and gulped it down,

leaving the crow and the other gull to “consider” like the cow in the

old song. Winter and necessity now make the crow something of a beach

comber. The birds cross over to the beach at low tide on mild days,

forage about warily, and return to their uplands the instant they no

longer have the beach all to themselves. A flight of gulls will send

them cawing home, their great sombre wings beating the ocean air. Even

on this immense and lonely beach, they remain the wariest of creatures,

and if I wish to see what they are up to, I have to use ten times the

care in stalking them that I would have to use in stalking any casual

sea bird. I have to creep through cuts and valleys in the dunes and

worm my way over cold sand that drinks the warmth and life out of the

flesh. I usually find them picking at a fish flung out of the breakers

perhaps a day or two before--picking industriously and solemnly.

Once in a while, a covey of shore larks will cross the dunes and alight

on the beach in the lee and the afternoon shadow of the sand bank.

They fly very low, the whole group rising and falling with the rise

and fall of the hills and hollows, a habit that gives their flights a

picturesque and amusing roller-coaster quality. Once having settled

down on the outer side of the dunes, the birds keep well up on the

beach and never seem to venture close to ocean.

This same shore lark, _Otocoris alpestris_, is perhaps the bird I

encounter most frequently during the winter months. This season they

are here by the thousand; indeed, they are so thick that I scarce

can walk behind the dunes without putting up a flock of these alert,

brownish, fugitive creatures. Their kingdom lies to the west of the

dunes, in the salt-hay fields and intermingled marsh areas which extend

between the dunes and the creek running more or less parallel to the

sand bar. Coming from Greenland and Labrador, these birds reach the

Eastham meadows in October and November, and all winter long they

forage and run about in the dead bristles of the hay. Their only

note here is a rather sad little “_tseep, tseep_,” which they utter

as they skim the grass in alarm, but it is said that they have an

interesting song during their breeding season in springtime Labrador.

[Illustration: _Brünnich’s Murres at Nest in the Summer North_]

It is early on a pleasant winter afternoon, and I am returning to

the Fo’castle through the meadows, my staff in my hand and a load of

groceries in a knapsack on my back. The preceding day brought snow

flurries to us out of the northwest, and there are patches of snow on

the hay fields and the marshes, and, on the dunes, nests of snow held

up off the ground by wiry spears of beach grass bent over and tangled

into a cup. Such little pictures as this last are often to be seen on

the winter dunes; I pause to enjoy them, for they have the quality

and delicacy of Japanese painting. There is a blueness in the air, a

blue coldness on the moors, and across the sky to the south, a pale

streamer of cloud smoking from its upper edge. Every now and then, I

see ahead of me a round, blackish spot in the thin snow; these are the

cast-off shells of horseshoe crabs, from whose thin tegument the snow

has melted. A flock of nervous shore larks, hidden under an old mowing

machine, emerge running, take to their wings, and, flying south a

fifty yards, suddenly drop and disappear into the grass. Hesitating on

the half-alert, a little flock of bobwhites, occasional invaders of

this stubble, watch me pass, and then continue feeding. To the west,

from the marsh, I hear the various cries of gulls, the mewing note, the

call, and that queer sound which is almost a guttural bark. Afternoon

shadows are gathering in the cuts of the dunes, blue shadows and cold,

and there is a fine sea tang in the air.

It is low tide, and the herring gulls, _Larus argentatus_, are feeding

on the flats and gravel banks. As I watch them through a glass, they

seem as untroubled as fowls on an inland farm. Their talkative groups

and gatherings have a domestic look. The gull population of the Cape

is really one people, for, though separate gull congregations live in

various bays and marshes, the mass of the birds seem to hear of any

new food supply and flock as one to the feast. So accustomed to man

have they grown, and so fearless, that they will follow in his very

footsteps for a chance to scavenge food; I have seen the great birds

walking round clammers who threw broken clams to them as they might

throw scraps of meat to kittens. In hungry seasons the clammer may hear

a flapping just behind and discover that a gull has just made off with

a clam from his pail. They follow the eelers, too, and on the ice of

the Eastham salt pond you may chance to see a pair of gulls disputing

an eel which the eelers have thrown away; one will have it by the tail,

the other by the head, and both tug with insistence and increasing

bad temper. The victory in this primitive battle goes either to the

strongest gull or to the fastest swallower.

An unhurried observation of the marsh, especially a study of its lesser

creeks and concealed pools, reveals hundreds of ducks. To identify

and classify these birds is a next to impossible task, for they are

very suspicious and have chosen their winter quarters with a sound

instinct for defensive strategy. The great majority of these birds are

undoubtedly black duck, _Anas rubripes_, the most wary and suspicious

of all wintering birds. All day long, back and forth over the dunes

between the marsh and the ocean, these ducks are ever flying; by twos

and threes and little flocks they go, and those who go out to sea fly

so far out that the eye loses them in the vastness of ocean. I like

to walk in the marsh early in the evening, keeping out as far as I can

toward the creeks. The ducks hear me and begin a questioning quacking.

I hear them talk and take alarm; other ducks, far off, take up the

_alerte_; sometimes wings whistle by in the darkness. The sound of a

pair of “whistler” ducks on the wing is a lovely, mysterious sound at

such a time. It is a sound made with wings, a clear, sibilant note

which increases as the birds draw near, and dies away in the distance

like a faint and whistling sigh.

One March evening, just as sundown was fading into night, the whole

sky chanced to be overspread with cloud, all save a golden channel in

the west between the cloud floor and the earth. It was very still,

very peaceful on my solitary dune. The whole earth was dark, dark as

a shallow cup lifted to a solemnity of silence and cloud. I heard a

familiar sound. Turning toward the marsh, I saw a flock of geese flying

over the meadows along the rift of dying, golden light, their great

wings beating with a slow and solemn beauty, their musical, bell-like

cry filling the lonely levels and the dark. Is there a nobler wild

clamour in all the world? I listened to the sound till it died away

and the birds had disappeared into darkness, and then heard a quiet

sea chiding a little at the turn of tide. Presently, I began to feel a

little cold, and returned to the Fo’castle, and threw some fresh wood

on the fire.

_Chapter VI_