oating in the water. They follow steamers for miles,
scarcely moving their wings as they float in the air; and if you throw
a cracker from the deck, some gull will make a swift swoop and snatch
it before the cracker reaches the water.

Far out on the Pacific the albatross sails proudly on his broad wings,
and cares nothing for high winds or storms. He rests and sleeps on the
billows at night with his little companions, the stormy petrels. He is
the largest and strongest of our birds of flight, the very king of the
sea. The stormy petrels are not much larger than a swallow. Sailors
call them. "Mother Carey's chickens," and are sure a storm is
coming up when petrels follow the ship. The albatross, petrel, and
a gull-like bird called a shearwater belong to the "tube-nosed
swimmers," on account of their curious long beaks.

Along the coast, and wading in the shallow waters around the bays, are
some strange birds known as pelicans and shags. They are good fishers,
and drive the darting, finny fellows before them as they wade in the
water till they can see and gobble them up. Most waders have under
their beaks a skin-pocket deep enough to hold a fish while carrying
it to their nestlings, or making ready to swallow it. All of these
sea-birds raise their young as far from the shore and from hunters
as possible. Great flocks of them roost on islands fifteen or twenty
miles out in the ocean, and fly into the bays every morning.

Wild ducks, geese, the herons, mud-hens, sandpipers, and curlews are
marsh and shore birds that feed and wade in the shallow salt water,
and nest on the banks or, like the heron, in trees near the bay. The
heron is a frog-catcher, and he will stand very still on his long legs
and patiently wait till the frog, thinking him gone, swims near. Then
one dart of the long bill captures froggy, and the heron waits for
another. You know the red-head, green mallard, canvas-back, and small
teal ducks, no doubt, and have seen the flocks of wild geese flying
and calling in the sky, or standing like patches of snow as they feed
in the marshes or grain-fields.

Down on the mud-flats at low tide you see birds called rails, and also
"kill-dee" plovers. The shoveller ducks are there, too fishing up with
broad, flat beaks little crabs and such creatures as are in the mud,
straining out mud and water, but swallowing the rest. All these birds
are "waders" and delight in mud and cold salt water. They are usually
quiet, or