Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/68

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44 Bird -Lore eared Owl are known to nest there, and my boatman, an intelligent fellow, who has done some collecting, declared that he had known a pair of Snowy Owls to raise a brood of young. The shore -birds found there in summer are very interesting. The Least Sandpiper is quite common, and if one will only keep stirring around over the marshy tundra, he will probably happen upon a nest. A pair of them raised a brood of the daintiest little chicks imaginable in a dry pasture right by the house next to the one where we were staying. How persist - WILSON'S SNIPE ON NEST "Piping her remonstrance" ently the anxious parents followed me, twittering and scolding, is evinced by the reflex snapshots which I have to show for it. Then there is the Wilson's S.nipe, which we can see almost any day winnowing the air with a humming sound like that made by the Golden - eye, twittering its love-song, or scolding sharply from the tip-top of a low spruce, if we are too near its nest or young. If we discover the nest by flushing the owner from it, she will soon return, perhaps even while we are looking on. I have a series of pictures which I took by setting the camera close to a nest and pulling a thread attached to the shutter. In one of these — taken as I stood out in plain sight, only a few steps away — the Snipe is just settling down upon the eggs, eyeing me and piping her remonstrance. The little Plovers — Piping and Semi-palmated — resort together in scat- tered colonies, to lay their eggs amid the sparse beach -grass, or at its edge,