This ridge of higher ground proved to be a mosquito roost—­a thousand here to one in the deeper, denser grass.  As I hurried across I noted with great satisfaction that the pink-white blossoms of the spreading dogbane were covered with mosquito carcasses.  It lessened my joy somewhat to find, upon examination, that all the victims were males.  Either they had drunk poison from the flowers, or else, and more likely, they had been unable to free their long-haired antennae from the sticky honey into which they had dipped their innocent beaks.  Several single flowers had trapped three, and from one blossom I picked out five.  If we could bring the dogbane to brew a cup which would be fatal to the females, it might be a good plant to raise in our gardens along with the eucalyptus and the castor-oil plants.

Everywhere as I went along, from every stake, every stout weed and topping bunch of grass, trilled the seaside sparrows—­a weak, husky, monotonous song, of five or six notes, a little like the chippy’s, more tuneful, perhaps, but not so strong.  They are dark, dusky birds, of a grayish olive-green hue, with a conspicuous yellow line before the eye, and yellow upon the shoulder.

There seems to be a sparrow of some kind for every variety of land between the poles.  Mountain-tops, seaside marshes, inland prairies, swamps, woods, pastures—­everywhere, from Indian River to the Yukon, a sparrow nests.  Yet one can hardly associate sparrows with marshes, for they seem out of place in houseless, treeless, half-submerged stretches.  These are the haunts of the shyer, more secretive birds.  Here the ducks, rails, bitterns, coots,—­birds that can wade and swim, eat frogs and crabs,—­seem naturally at home.  The sparrows are perchers, grain-eaters, free-fliers, and singers; and they, of all birds, are the friends and neighbors of man.  This is no place for them.  The effect of this marsh life upon the flight and song of these two species was very marked.  Both showed unmistakable vocal powers which long ago would have been developed under the stimulus of human listeners; and during all my stay (so long have they crept and skulked about through the low marsh paths) I did not see one rise a hundred feet into the air, nor fly straight away for a hundred yards.  They would get up just above the grass, and flutter and drop—­a puttering, short-winded, apoplectic struggle, very unbecoming and unworthy.

By noon I had completed a circle and recrossed the lighthouse road in the direction of the bay.  A thin sheet of lukewarm water lay over all this section.  The high spring tides had been reinforced by unusually heavy rains during April and May, giving a great area of pasture and hay land back, for that season, to the sea.  Descending a copsy dune from the road, I surprised a brood of young killdeers feeding along the drift at the edge of the wet meadow.  They ran away screaming, leaving behind a pair of spotted sandpipers, “till-tops,” that had been wading with them in the shallow water.  The sandpipers teetered on for a few steps, then rose at my approach, scaled nervously out over the drowned grass, and, circling, alighted near where they had taken wing, continuing instantly with their hunt, and calling Tweet-tweet, tweet-tweet, and teetering, always teetering, as they tiptoed along.