over them. Thickets and clumps of alders, as well as of aspens and willows, are also com

mon.

The exceptional trees are a few scattered white pines, small and frayed by the wind, some thrifty red cedars, a couple of hunched up hemlocks which bear no resemblance to the stately forest trees, a few red maples, two elms, dwarfed and stunted, that look large only at a distance, and two small clumps of red birches. The red or river birch is common in Texas, the lower Mississippi region and Florida, and extends along the coastal plain to Long Island. From there to Essex County, Massachusetts, is a gap of one hundred and fifteen miles where the tree is absent, but it is common in the lower valley of the Merrimac River and in southern New Hampshire. Professor M. L. Fernald explains this distribution by the former existence of a great highway for plant migration, a sandy shelf that extended out for miles all along the coast from the southern parts of the United States to Newfoundland, a shelf which has largely sunk beneath the waters since the close of the glacial period.

CHAPTER IV

LAND BIRDS OF THE DUNES

"Bird of the wilderness,

Blythesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!"

TH

HOGG.

HE sandy and desert character of the dunes would at first sight seem to be inimical to numbers or variety in the bird-life there, but the fact that the seacoast is one of the great highways of bird migration renders this region a particularly favored spot for the ornithologist. The thickets of bushes and trees are so limited in extent that the bird population during the migrations is often much crowded together, instead of being spread out over wider areas as in upland country. The sea on the one side and the marsh on the other are each equally inhospitable to

land birds, so that the concentration in the thickets of the dunes is sometimes extreme. Another fact which is of advantage to the bird student is that the trees in the dunes are so low that one can often look down on the tallest of them from the peak of a dune. Besides the great number of migrants, which include practically all the birds that stream along the coast in the spring and fall, and find rest, shelter and food in the dunes, there are a number of interesting birds that spend part or all of the winter there, some of which are rarely found elsewhere than in sand dunes.

The birds that nest in the dunes, and rear their young there, are comparatively few in number and are quickly enumerated. The robin builds in the trees or about the few houses and shanties; the yellow warbler and Maryland yellow-throat are common, and the song sparrow is everywhere in the bushes. Still more common is the Savannah sparrow nesting at the foot of clumps of tall beach grass throughout the dunes and on the edges of the tidal inlets from the marsh. Its song, such as it is, is heard on every hand during the spring and summer,-two chirps, followed by two trills, the first exceedingly high

pitched, thin and grasshopper-like, the second rather sweet and musical. The first trill is inaudible to some whose hearing is otherwise good.

A few tree swallows nest in the hollow trees and a few bank swallows in holes in the windcuttings of the dunes. Red-winged blackbirds, bronzed grackles and crows are all common nesters, as well as kingbirds and a few black-billed cuckoos and flickers. There are a few other breeding birds of the dunes, but these are the chief ones.

I doubt not that the hummingbird has raised its young there, for I have occasionally seen it among the dunes, although I have not found its nest. One could not wish a more accurate or charming description of this bird than that of William Wood in his "New England's Prospect." He says: "The Humbird is one of the wonders of the Countrey, being no bigger than a Hornet, yet hath all the dimensions of a Bird, as bill, and wings, with quills, spider-like legges, small clawes: For colour, she is as glorious as the Raine-bow; as she flies, she makes a little humming noise like a Humble-bee: wherefore shee is called the Humbird."