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Updated: May 25, 2025
Nobody expected them to remain hereabouts, as they normally winter in the West Indies and in Central and South America; but every little while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and on the 21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird skimming over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. I put up my glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!"
Bringing my gun with me for there were great numbers of small golden plover flying past us towards the sand patches now being revealed by the ebbing tide, we started off, Niâbon leading, and conducting us directly towards the centre of the islet, which was less than three-quarters of a mile from shore to shore, and was the northernmost of a chain of five or six, almost connected with each other at low water, and forming the northern horn of the lagoon.
The flash and ripple and glimmer of the tall sunflowers, the myriad voices of gleeful bobolinks, the chirp and gurgle of red-winged blackbirds swaying on the willows, the meadow-larks piping from grassy bogs, the peep of the prairie chick and the wailing call of plover on the flowery green slopes of the uplands made it all an ecstatic world to me.
Wild swans occasionally sailed in all their majesty on its waters, while plover of every length of limb and bill, and every species of plaintive cry, waded round its margin, or swept in clouds over the neighbouring swamps. Sometimes deer would trot out of the woods and slake their thirst on its shore, and the frequent rings that broke its smooth surface told of life in the watery depths below.
A long-billed shore plover takes up the alarm, and blunderingly races towards instead of from me, whimpering "plin, plin" as it passes and, still curious though alert, steps and bobs and ducks all its movements and flight impulsive and staccato. The grey mist whitens. A luminous patch indicates the east. The light increases.
Then a voice at my back, making me forget the sizzling stuff, the fire, the breakfast, said with a note of extreme anxiety: "Good morning, Jackachobee! Oughtn't Echochee be here by this time? You don't think any thing's happened to her, do you? I can't whistle like a plover and had to come to breakfast unannounced. I hope it's ready. You've seen nothing of those men?"
The mournful curlew, the dejected plover and the low-spirited snipe, who sought to join him in his suicidal contemplations, the raven, soaring through the air on restless wings, croaking his melancholy complaints were not calculated to add to the cheerfulness of the scene.
It also reflected gulls, ducks, plover, and other wildfowl, as they sailed, whirred, or waded about, absorbed in the activities of their domestic economy, or in the hilarious enjoyment of the sweet influences around them.
But the stupendous slaty-black darkness, mixed with yellow clouds of dust, gained on us, and before we got to the gate the terrified screams of wild birds reached our ears, and glancing back we saw multitudes of gulls and plover flying madly before the storm, trying to keep ahead of it.
The evening was calm and the noise of the sea came softly out of the distance. Now and then plover and curlew cried, a half-moon hung in the west, and the black hills rose out of fleecy mist. Evelyn was imaginative and liked the drive across the flat holms in the dark.
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