LIFE HISTOEIES OF NORTH AMERICAN SHORE 



BIRDS 



ORDER LIMICOLAE (PART .2) 



• By Arthur ClevelajS^d Bext 



Of Taunton, Massachusetts 



Family SCOLOPACIDAE, Snipes and Sandpipers 



TEINGA SOLITARIA SOLITAKIA Wilson 

 SOLITARY SANDPIPER 



HABITS 



* This dainty " woodland tattler " is associated in my mind with 

 some secluded, shady woodland pool in early autumn, where the 

 summer drought has exposed broad muddy shores and where the 

 biightly tinted leaves of the swamp maple float lightly on the still 

 water. Here the solitary wader may be seen, gracefully poised on 

 some fallen log, nodding serenely, or walking gracefully over the 

 mud or in the shallow water. Seldom disturbed by man, it hardly 

 seems to heed his jDresence ; it may raise its wings, displaying their 

 pretty linings, or it may flit lightly away to the other side of the 

 pool, with a few sharp notes of protest and a flash of white in its 

 tail. I have often seen it in other places where one would not expect 

 to find shore birds, such as the muddy banks of a sluggish stream, 

 somewhat polluted with sewage, which flows back of my garden in 

 the center of the city, or some barnyard mud puddle, reeking with 

 the filth of cattle ; perhaps it is attracted to such unsavory places by 

 the swarms of flies that it finds there. 



Sjyring. — The solitary sandjjiper arrives in the United States dur- 

 ing the latter part of March, but it makes slow progress northward, 

 for it does not reach New England until May. We generally see it 

 singly, in pairs, or in small numbers, but according to William 

 Brewster (1925) it sometimes occurs in favorable localities, near 

 Umbagog Lake, Maine, in large numbers ; he writes : 



According to an entry in my joiirnal I saw tlieni there literally in " swarms " 

 on May 20, ISSO, when, as we advanced by way of the river in a boat, they were 



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