164 WADING BIRDS. 



Like the preceding species, but more frequently, they 

 have the habit of balancing or wagging the tail, in which 

 even the young join as soon as they are fledged. From the 

 middle to the close of May, as they happen to arrive in the 

 different climates chosen for their summer residence, the 

 pairs, seceding from their companions, seek out a site for 

 their nest, which is always in a dry open field of grass or 

 grain, sometimes in the seclusion and shade of a field of 

 maise, but most commonly in a dry pasture, contiguous to 

 the sea shore ; and in some of the solitary and small sea 

 islands, several pairs, sometimes nest near to each other, in 

 the immediate vicinity of the noisy nurseries of the quail- 

 ing Terus.* The nest, sunk into the bosom of a grassy 

 tuft, is slightly made of its withered tops, and with a thin 

 lining of hay or bent. The eggs 4 in number, are of a 

 greyish yellow, or dull cream color, marked with a great 

 number of specs and spots of dark brown, with a very few, 

 of a somewhat lighter shade, the whole most numerous at 

 the larger end : they are about 1^ inches in length, and 

 very wide at the greater end. On being flushed from 

 her eggs, the female goes off* without uttering any com- 

 plaint ; but when surprised with her young, she prac- 

 tises all the arts of dissimulation common to many other 

 birds, fluttering in the path, as if badly wounded, and gen- 

 erally succeeds, in this way, so far to deceive a dog, or per- 

 haps squirrel, as to cause them to overlook the brood, for 

 whose protection these instinctive arts are practised ; nor 

 are the young without their artful instinct, for on hearing 

 the reiterated cries of their parents, they scatter about, and 

 squatting still in the withered grass, almost exactly their 

 color, it is with careful search very difficult to discover them, 



♦ As at Egg Rock, near Nahant, where they appear sedulously to employ the 

 small portion of gruss which grows on that islet. 



