SEMIPALMATED SNIPE, OR WILLET. 147 



and estuaries at low water. In the fall, when the flocks of 

 young birds associate together, which may be easily known 

 by the greyness of their plumage, they are selected by the 

 gunners in preference to the older and darker birds, being 

 tender, fat, and fine-flavored game. In the months of Oc- 

 tober and November they gradually pass on to their winter 

 quarters in the warmer parts of the continent. Transient 

 flocks of the young, bred in higher latitudes, visit the shores 

 of Cohasset by the middle of August, but timorous, wild, 

 and wandering, they soon hasten to rejoin the host they 

 had accidentally forsaken. 



The length of the Willet is about 15^ inches ; length of the bill to 

 the rictus 2^ inches, much shorter in the young bird of the season ; 

 tarsus 2 inches 8 lines. — In the summer plumage the general color 

 above is brownish-grey, striped faintly on the neck, more con- 

 spicuously on the head and back, with blackish-brown, the scapulars, 

 tertiaries and their coverts irregularly barred with the same. Tail 

 coverts white. Tail even, whitish, thickly mottled with pale ashy- 

 brown, that color forming the ground of the central feathers, which 

 are barred with dusky-brown towards their extremities. Spurious 

 wing, primary coverts, a great portion of the anterior extremities 

 of the primaries, the axillary feathers, andunder wing coverts, black, 

 with a shade of brown ; the remaining lower and longer portion of 

 the primaries, and the upper row of under wing coverts, white ; the 

 posterior primaries tipt with the same ; secondaries and the outer 

 webs of their greater coverts, white, marbled with dusky. Wings 

 ra,ther longer than the tail. The lores, with a spotted liver-brown 

 streak, bounded above by a spotted white one. Eye-lids, chin, belly, 

 and vent, white ; the rest of the imder plumage brownish- white, 

 streaked on the throat, and transversely barred, or waved on the 

 breast, shoulders, flanks, and under tail coverts, with clove-brown, 

 the bars pointed in the middle. — Female colored like the male, but 

 an inch longer. Legs and feet dark lead color, the soles inclining to 

 olive ; the toes broadly margined with a sort of continuation of the 

 web. Iris hazle. 



Winter dress with fainter spots on the upper plumage, and with- 

 out the dark waving transverse bars below, only the fore part of 

 the neck and breast of a cinereous tint marked with small brown 



