"Not exactly a picnic," said the Doctor, "but what I have brought you
purposely to see. The birds flying over the alders are Red-winged
Blackbirds; those coming from the pines are Purple Grackles; the big
black ones flying overhead are Crows; and the yellow-breasted fellows
walking in the grass are Meadowlarks. We must first make the horses
comfortable, and then we can spend the day with the birds among these
marshes and meadows."

When they reached the beach the wagon track led through a hedge of
barberry bushes to a shed covered with pine boughs at the back of the
fisherman's house.

The fisherman himself came out to help them with the horses. He was a
Finlander, Olaf Neilsen, who kept boats in summer, fished, and tended
two buoy lights at the river entrance for a living. His hut stood on a
point, with the sandy beach of the bay in front of it, and the steeper
bank where the river ran on the left. All the time the water was rushing
out, out, out of the river and creeping down on the sand to make low
tide.

The children did not know it then, but they were to spend many happy
days on this beach, in company with their uncle and Olaf, during the
next two years.

The Doctor whispered something mysterious to Olaf about clams, hoes, and
"dead low water"; then he told the children to rest awhile under the
pine shelter, and hear about the Blackbirds before they went out to see
them in the meadows.