Jan.,1916 CHARACTERISTIC BIRDS OF THE DAKOTA PRAIRIES 15 The other of the two roadside sloughs was down a road running between blue green spiky wheat and yellow green leafy flax fields with their delecta- ble promise of acres of golden grain and fields of sky blue bloom. The slough could also be reached by cutting across pastures whose well worn cattle trails led to its water. A pair of brown Gadwall were so often seen on the slough that they doubtless nested in the surrounding pasture. They sat undisturbed when wagons passed only a few rods away, but if the horses stopped would fly off, the drake showing the characteristic black hinderparts. When I went down to watch them one day the cattle coming to water with jangling cow-bell covered my approach so that I slipped in unobserved behind a chokecherry and juneberry screen. The Ducks sat complacently on the pool though the cows half encircled it, one of them taking its stand only a few feet from the birds. As I watched, the pair swam slowly along the edge of the slough feeding as they went, the drake showing the orange edges of his bill, the duck her black bill and orange feet. Hunger satisfied, they stopped to plume them- selves, after which, sitting on the water close together, their big bills resting on their backs, Darby and Joan proceeded to nap. They napped not with one eye open but with both eyes winking so often that there was an alterna- tion like that from the winking of the shutter'of a camera--light--dark-- light--dark. An excellent safety device it seemed, though there appeared little need, for they looked more like chunks of wood than birds, the white wing patch being the only exposed note of color. While ! waited impatiently, Joan awoke and started to swim away, at which Darby, vexed, perhaps at the interruption of his nap, opened his big bill at her. Nevertheless he swam after her, though he repeated his eloquent remonstrance. What would they do nex,t? High over the prairie appeared a flock of Franklin Gulls coming rapidly toward us. Joan, as if startled, rocked back and forth long enough to get up momentum, and then rose clear of the water. Darby followed unquestioningly, the pair, to my disappointment, flying away across the pas- ture out of.sight. In another place on a small slough between the road and a barn we sur- prised, and were surprised by, a Bittern. We stared at it in amazement, but though it watched us alertly, as we did not stop the .horses it bravely stood its ground until we were out of sight. One of the most interesting and characteristic of the small sloughs seen was only a few yards from the road, a grassy slough not more than twenty-five feet in diameter that seemed only the merest saucer in the level prairie. As we drove up we saw a Yellow-legs, a bird whose long yellow legs show to good advantage, standing on lush green marsh ground and whose neat fresh plum- age makes it fit in well in a land of cool clean wheat fields. As we came alongside the little slough we were surprised by a loud outburst, the musical ecstatic song of an invisible Sora. Along the edge of the pool in the marsh .grass we discovered a parent Coot swimming around with its droll little pink- headed youngster. And as we drove off, one of the fascinating Black-headed Terns wavered over the slough. Facinating, anomalous birds of both water and land ! They were often seen flying over the prairie hunting insects where there was apparently no water in the landscape. ?rhat a thrill the sight of these black-heads gives! But the most enchanting, magic moment of all is when just the long pointed gray Tern wings become visible in a gray sky--as when the white forms of Gulls come out of a fog.
