Blackbelly Plover

When the night falls and the voices
Drift in from sea,
In dreams the tumult of the waters
Comes home to me.

When from the mists of morning
The Plovers call.
In dreams, the old caressing music
Holds me in thrall.

If there is any poetry in the beach wanderer 'long shore on a May morning, the wild call of BLACKBELLIES will bring it out. Such a dawn I remember. Meadow mists with innumerable subdued tints yielding slowly to the sun's chariot. The Shinnecock Hills pink under that warmth of color. Deepening blue overhead, and beyond — the indigo ribbon of the sea.

A flock of about twenty, arranged in segments of sharply defined white and black, were having breakfast and a bath within easy range of the glasses. Some preferred food to water and were busily eating dainties spread on the seaweed table. A few ecstatic ones ecstatic ones jumped aloft and splashed down like divers from a springboard. What a fluttering of wings and fine bodies was there! A sentinel stood erect as a mitered bishop on a sand spit and took no part in the excitement. Then the sun cleared the dunes, suffusing them in pink glow till it required little imagination to believe I watched Avocets. A whisper of far spaces went thru the flock: they ran into a compact bunch and next moment were thrumming the air with powerful beats — launched on the northern journey.

They are sagacious, wary and shy, soon learning to keep within protected areas. Since Spring shooting has been tabued they are far more common in their favorite haunts at that season than they are in the Fall. Single birds will often come to decoys but seldom alight among the wooden counterfeits.

For real hard work I recommend "crawling up" on beach-feeding birds. To get one or more under these conditions is a triumph. The quarry has all the best of it and they are smart enuf to hold the advantage. Success means plenty of exercise, perspiration and sand inside your shirt!