July Fifteenth
Young spotted sandpipers, or "tip-ups," are able to leave their nest (in a slight depression in the ground) soon after the eggs hatch. It is indeed interesting to watch a family of these animated woolly balls on stilts, running along the shore with their parents. When pursued they sometimes will take to the water and cling to the vegetation on the bottom.
Notes
July Sixteenth
The perfectly round white heads of the button bush are now conspicuous along the streams, bogs, and lakes. The long slender styles project from all sides like the quills on the back of a frightened hedgehog. Although this shrub is a lover of water and damp soil, "it is sometimes found on elevated ground, where it serves, it is claimed, as a good sign of the presence of a hidden spring. The inner bark is sometimes used as a cough medicine." (Newhall.)
July Seventeenth
During the haying season the birds hold high carnival. Robins, song and chipping sparrows, orioles, bobolinks, goldfinches, meadow larks, and flickers, all feed upon the insects that are now so easy to catch. A seat in the shade overlooking a new mown field is at present a good point from which to study birds.