The nest of such a beach bird is a singular affair. It is but a
depression, and sometimes scarcely that, in the open, shelterless
beach. “Nest building on the open sand,” says Mr. Forbush, “is but the
work of a moment. The bird alights, crouches slightly, and works its
little feet so rapidly that the motion seems a mere blur, while the
sand flies out in every direction as the creature pivots about. The
tern then settles lower and smooths the cavity by turning and working
and moving its body from side to side.”
I have mislaid the scrap of paper on which I jotted down the number
of nests I found that morning, but I think I counted twenty to
twenty-five. There were eggs in every nest, in some two, in others
three, in one case and one only, four. To describe the coloration
of the shells is difficult, for there was a deal of variation, but
perhaps I can give some idea of their appearance by saying that they
were beach-coloured with overtones of bluish green, and speckled with
browns and violet-browns and lavenders. What interested me most,
however, was not the eggs, but the manner in which the birds had
decorated their nests with pebbles and bits of shell. Here and there
along the beach, the “leasties” had picked up flat bits of sea shell
about the size of a finger nail, and with these bits they had lined the
bowl of their nests, setting the flat pieces in flat, like parts of a
mosaic.
For two weeks I watched these “leasties” and their nests, taking every
precaution not to disturb or alarm the setting birds. Yet I had but
to pass anywhere between them and the tide to put them up, and when I
walked south with coast guardsmen, I heard single cries of alarm in the
starry and enormous night. Toward the end of June, a sudden northeaster
came.
It was a night storm. I built a little fire, wrote a letter or two, and
listened to the howling wind and the bursts of rain. All night long,
and it was a wakeful, noisy night, I had the “leasties” on my mind.
I felt them out there on the wild shelterless beach, with the black
gale screaming over them and the rain pouring down. Opening my door,
I looked for a moment into the drenching blackness and heard a great
roaring of the sea.
The tide and the gale had ebbed together when I rose at five the next
morning, but there was still wind and a grey drizzle. At the foot of
big dune I found desolation. The tide had swept the beach. Not a nest
remained or a sign of a nest, and the birds had gone. Later that day,
just south of big dune, I saw bits of bluish-green eggshell in a lump
of fresh weed. Where the birds went to, I never knew. Probably to a
better place to try again.
Bless me! I thought, returning; what of the song sparrows?
Through the drenching grass, bare-legged, I hurried to the dusty-miller
bush. The sand had been moving during the night; it had crept along the
dunes, it had rained down with the drops of rain, and the bush was now
well embedded. Indeed, it was a bush no more, but a thicket of separate
stalks growing out of a deep, rain-soaked mound of sand. As I drew
close to it, I saw through the rain the prudent eye of Madam Sparrow
aglint in the leaves. The sand had risen to within an inch of her nest,
the leaves which concealed it were awry with wind and choked with
sand, but there sat the little bird, resolved and dutiful. She raised
her brood--how well she deserved to--and some time in July the whole
family moved out into the dunes.
I must now add a paragraph from my autumnal notes and tell of my last
sight of the great summer throng of terns. It was an unforgettable
experience. During August the birds thinned out, and as the month
drew to a close, whole days passed without a sight or sign of their
presence. By September 1st, I imagined that most of them had gone.
Then came the unexpected. On Saturday, September 3d, friends came down
the beach to see me, and at the close of their visit, as I opened the
Fo’castle door, I found that the air above the dunes was snowy with
young terns. The day had been mild, and the late afternoon light was
mild and rosy golden--the sun was an hour from his setting--and high in
space and golden light the myriads of birds drifted and whirled like
leaves. North and south we saw them for miles along the dunes. For
twenty minutes, perhaps, or half an hour, the swarming filled my sky,
and during all that time I did not hear a single bird utter a single
sound.
At the end of that period, withdrawing south and inland, the gathering
melted away.
It was really a very curious thing. Apparently some impulse from
heaven had suddenly seized upon the birds, entered into their feathered
breasts, and led them into the air above the dunes. Whence came that
spirit, whence its will, and how had it breathed its purpose into those
thousand hearts? The whole performance reminded me very much of a
swarming of bees. A migrational impulse, yes, and something more. The
birds were flying high, higher than I had ever seen terns go, and as
far as I could judge--or guess--the great majority of the fliers were
young birds of the year. It was a rapture, a glory of the young. And
this was the last of the terns.
[Illustration: _A Cape Cod_]
Late August, and day by day, I see more shore birds and see them
oftener. All summer long there have been sandpipers and ringnecks
on the beach, but earlier in the season the birds are elusive and
may disappear for days. The first great flocks to return from the
Northern breeding grounds arrived here about the middle of July. I
remember their coming. For four interminable days a strong and tireless
southwest wind had billowed across the lagoon and off to a smoky sea;
on the morning of the fifth day, just before sunrise, this wind had
died; then had come dullness and quiet, and, between nine and ten
o’clock, a breath of easterly air. All that fifth afternoon the beach
had been black with birds, most of them ringnecks or semipalmated
plovers. The long southwester had apparently dammed up a great
migrational stream. These first flocks were vagrant mobs. Walking to
Nauset between two and three o’clock, I must have put up between two
and three thousand birds. As I drew near, mob after mob after mob
crowded the air and sought feeding grounds ahead. The smaller autumnal
flocks had flown in psychic unity, rising and falling, wheeling and
alighting together; these mobs scattered and divided into wandering
companies.
Late August, and my wild ducks, having raised their families, are
returning by hundreds to the marsh. During May and June and early July,
when I wandered about this region in the night, I heard no sound from
the flats. Now, when I get out to signal to the first coast guardsman
coming south at half-past nine, I hear from the dark levels a sentinel
quack, a call. The marsh fills with life again; the great sun goes
south along green treetops and moorlands fruiting and burned brown.
The quality of life, which in the ardour of spring was personal and
sexual, becomes social in midsummer. Stirred by the vernal fire, a
group psychically dissolves, for every creature in a flock is intent
upon the use and the offering of his own awakened flesh. Even creatures
who are of the flocking or herding habit emerge as individuals. With
the rearing of the young, and their integration into the reëstablished
group, life becomes again a social rhythm. The body has been given and
sacrificially broken, its own gods and all gods obeyed.
[Illustration: _Late Summer on the Dunes_]