There is no rocky coast upon Cape Cod. The powerful swirl of waves into worn granite race-ways is unknown. Instead of rocks, there are long sand beaches curving as far as the eye can reach, cut, every few miles, by the opening of some little bay or harbor. There are no perils on a bold rocky shore equal to those of Peaked Hill Bars off the white Provincetown sand-hills, seizing vessels in their sunken traps and holding them there to beat in pieces. There is not a mile of coast from Provincetown to Chatham that has not stories to tell of shipwreck. In fact, the history of the whole coast line, inner and outer, of Cape Cod would be a history of disasters, from the time when the pirate ship _Whidah_ was driven ashore in a gale, a century ago, and more than a hundred bodies were washed up on the beach. [Illustration: HIGHLAND LIGHT, NORTH TRURO, AND NAUSET LIGHT, EASTHAM.] The number of birds on Cape Cod is very great, and among them are many rare ones for the North, such as the black skimmer, or shear-water, and the Maryland yellow-throat. Mr. H. E. Chase, who spends his summers at Hyannisport, has himself counted a hundred and eighteen varieties, and has shot and stuffed a good many of the more interesting. The prairie warbler is often met in the pine woods. It is so bold that one can sit within a few feet of it, while it hunts for its food like the chickadees, often head down, clinging to some twig, now and then pausing to chirp. At dusk, the night-heron wings its way out over the salt-marshes to relieve the kingfisher, who has been sounding his rattle all day long from some favorite post; and as the deeper shadows gather, whip-poor-wills and owls come out from the deepest recesses of the woods. Among the most common birds are the meadow-lark or marsh quail, the sharp-tailed finch, the red-wing blackbird, the grassfinch, the green heron, the tern or mackerel-gull, and the shore birds. They are all independent of the woods. From the peculiar position of Cape Cod, and the equalizing effect necessarily produced on the climate by the ceaseless sweep of ocean breezes, many stragglers of northern and southern species, never seen in other parts of Massachusetts, find their way here, and some which usually pass further south have even been known to winter here. Birds which follow the shore in their migrations consult the nature of the coast. In Eastern Massachusetts, more plainly than anywhere else, is seen the change from the low, sandy shore which marks the South to the high and rocky coast-line of the North. Such a change is sure to be noticed by birds on their migrations, for on the character of the coast depends their food. Cape Cod is, therefore, particularly fitted for a resting-place of the thousands of shore birds on their southward journey, and acts, moreover, as a barrier to Southern species wandering North in the late summer. Some years ago, a great white heron was shot near Yarmouth, and the least-bittern has been shot at Chatham.