LESSER YELLOW-LEGS 345 



To the Long Island gunner the yellow-legs and its associates are known as 

 "bay snipe." Various customs relating to their pursuit for sport (sniping) 

 have arisen in the course of the generations that it has been in vogue. Imita- 

 tion wooden birds ("stool") are set out as decoys in the marshes over which 

 the birds may be expected to pass, and the gunner stations himself within range 

 behind a blind usually constructed of bushes. There is opportunity for consider- 

 able skill in setting out the decoys, placing and constructing the blind, imitating 

 the cries of the various species to draw them within range. Where possible 

 the decoys are placed so as to be seen from every direction against a surface 

 of water ; if in a small pool scattered about, if in a larger water area, directly 

 off some projecting point so as not to be blanketed by the land. The larger 

 the show of decoys, the larger the flocks of birds that will be tempted to 

 respond to them, and one attempts to scatter them so that each will stand 

 apart, no three which are close together will be in line. They all face more 

 or less directly into the wind as would alighted birds. Ideally the blind is 

 placed to windward of the rig of decoys. Approaching birds maneuver toward 

 it from down wind, and are so less likely to notice the gunner and take alarm 

 before coming within range. 



Winter. — Although a few lesser yellow-legs may spend the winter 

 occasionally as far north as Louisiana and Florida, the main winter 

 home is in southern South America and very few are to be found 

 regularly north of that continent. A. H. Holland (1892) records it as 

 fairly common throughout the year in Argentina but more numerous 

 from October to February. Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1926), refer- 

 ring to the same general region, writes : 



The lesser yellow-legs was widespread in distribution after October and 

 was more abundant on the whole than Totanus melanoleucus. The birds 

 frequented the shores of open lagoons, shallow pools, or coastal mud flats, 

 and though found distributed singly or two or three together it was not 

 unusual to encounter them in larger bands that might contain 100 individuals. 

 On their wintering grounds they were rather silent, but with the opening of 

 northward migration resumed their habit of uttering musical though noisy 

 calls when disturbed in any manner. On the pampas they congregated during 

 drier seasons about lagoons and flocks often sought refuge from the violent 

 winds that swept the open plains behind scant screens of rushes. After any 

 general rain these flocks dispersed to pools of rain water in the pastures, 

 where insect food was easily available. The winter population was thus not 

 stationary, but shifted constantly with changes in the weather. By the first 

 of March the lesser yellow-legs had begun their northward movement and 

 numbers were found near Guamini, where they paused to rest after a northward 

 flight from Patagonia. In their case, as in that of other migrant species from 

 North America, it was instructive to note that the migration southward came 

 in September and October when the birds traveled southward with the unfold- 

 ing of the southern spring and that the return northward was initiated by 

 the approach of rigorous weather in faraway Patagonia. Migrant flocks, many 

 of whose members offered sad evidence of inhospitable treatment at the hands 

 of Argentine gunners in the shape of broken or missing legs, were noted on 

 the plains of Mendoza, near the base of the Andes, in March. And during 

 early April the migration became a veritable rush so that on the night of 

 April 5, at Tucuman, the air was filled with the cries of these and other waders 

 in steady flight northward above the city. 



