and Tringa pusilla[1] were both shot in numbers this day; the young are now as large as the old, and we see little flocks everywhere. We heard the "Gulnare" was at Bonne Espérance, twenty miles west of us; I wish she was here, I should much like to see her officers again.
August 5. This has been a fine day, no hurricane. I have finished two Labrador Curlews, but not the ground. A few Curlews were shot, and a Black-breasted Plover. John shot a Shore Lark that had almost completed its moult; it appears to me that northern birds come to maturity sooner than southern ones, yet the reverse is the case in our own species. Birds of the Tringa kind are constantly passing over our heads in small bodies bound westward, some of the same species which I observed in the Floridas in October. The migration of birds is perhaps much more wonderful than that of fishes, almost all of which go feeling their way along the shores and return to the very same river, creek, or even hole to deposit their spawn, as birds do to their former nest; but the latter do not feel their way, but launching high in air go at once and correctly too, across vast tracts of country, yet at once stopping in portions heretofore their own, and of which they know by previous experiences the comforts and advantages. We have had several arrivals of vessels, some so heavily loaded with fish that the water runs over their decks; others, in ballast, have come to purchase fish.
August 10. I now sit down to post my poor book, while a heavy gale is raging furiously around our vessel. My reason for not writing at night is that I have been drawing so constantly, often seventeen hours a day, that the weariness of my body at night has been unprecedented, by such work at least. At times I felt as if my physical powers would abandon me; my neck, my shoulders, and,
- ↑ Not Ereunetes pusillus, but the Least Sandpiper, Tringa (Actodromas) minutilla, which appears as Tringa pusilla in Audubon's works.—E. C.
