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The colonists found it strongly entrenched in a rocky basin and astir with life. After a short rest they proceeded towards Lake Winnipeg, and soon were moving slowly down its low-lying eastern shore. Here they had their first glimpse of the prairie country, with its green carpet of grass. Out from the water's edge grew tall, lank reeds, the lurking place of snipe and sand-piper.
One young fisherman with big boots over his trousers started off at a great pace, pounding along in the most dogged way, while a little chap in a tight bathing-suit with very thin legs skimmed by him, looking so like a sand-piper it was impossible to help laughing at both.
Venning will crawl on to the little island on our right and watch the south hank. You, Compton, will take the head of the large island on our left, and I will watch from the other end. If any of us see danger, we will give the whistle of the sand-piper. Each will take water and food, and each, of course, will keep himself hid." "We take our guns, of course?" "Best not.
'You seem to have given up catching anything. You have not stirred a fish in this last two pools, except that little saucy yellow shrimp, who jumped over your fly, and gave a spiteful slap at it with his tail. Too true; and what could be the cause? Had that impudent sand-piper frightened all the fish on his way up? Had an otter paralysed them with terror for the morning?
It has an orange bill and feet; and is not seen 4 in the back country during the winter. The red-bill is, I believe, identical with the oyster-catcher of the Cornish coast. It has a long orange bill, and orange feet, and is black and white over the body. The sand-piper is very like the lark in plumage. The quail is nearly exterminated.
These gloomy boughs Had charms for him: and here he loved to sit, His only visitants a straggling sheep, The stone-chat, or the glancing sand-piper; And on these barren rocks, with fern and heath And juniper and thistle sprinkled o'er, Fixing his downcast eye, he many an hour A morbid pleasure nourished, tracing here An emblem of his own unfruitful life: And, lifting up his head, he then would gaze On the more distant scene, how lovely 'tis Thou seest, and he would gaze till it became Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain The beauty, still more beauteous!
The birds, according to Sir Charles Lyell, must have been of various sizes; some as small as the sand-piper, and others as large as the ostrich, the width of the stride being in proportion to the size of the foot. There is one set, in which the foot is nineteen inches long, and the stride between four and five feet, indicating a bird nearly twice the size of the African ostrich.
They must have been of various sizes, some no larger than a small sand-piper, while others, judging from their footprints, which measure no less than nineteen inches, must have been twice the size of the modern African ostrich. The distances between the smaller measure only about three inches, but in the base of the largest, called the Ornithichnites Gigas, they are from four to six feet apart.
The most remarkable of the group are the lanky avoçets, with their long legs adapted to hunt rivers for fish spawn and water insects: among them, the long-legged plover should be noticed. The varieties of the sand-piper, in the next case , now claim a careful inspection.
I observed to-day a common sand-piper sitting on the head of a hippopotamus; when he disappeared under water the bird skimmed over the surface, hovering near the spot until the animal reappeared, when he again settled. Feb. 1st. The character of the river has changed.
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