SOLITARY SANDPIPER 7 



those normally to be expected in a sandpiper. Although it did not conceal 

 itself from me by this means, it made itself appear extremely unlike a bird. 



Solitary sandpipers are usually very tame and unsuspicious, often 

 to the verge of stupidity, as the following incident, related by 

 Doctor Coues (1874) well illustrates: 



Once coming up to a fence that went past a little pool, and peeping through 

 the slats, I saw eight tattlers of this species wading about in the shallow 

 water, searching for food. I pulled trigger on one; the others set up a 

 simultaneous outcry, and I expected them, of course, to fly off, but they presently 

 quieted down and began feeding again. Without moving from my place, I 

 fired three times more, killing a single bird at each discharge ; still no effect 

 upon the survivors, except as before. Then I climbed over the fence, and 

 stood in full view of the four remaining birds ; they merely flapped to the 

 further side of the pool, and stood still looking at me, nodding away, as if 

 agreed that the whole thing was very singular. I stood and deliberately 

 loaded and fired three times more, taking one bird each time; and it was only 

 as I was ramming another charge, that the sole surviving bird concluded to 

 make off, which he did, I will add in justice to his wits, in a great hurry. 



Mr. Brewster (1925) says: 



Not less confiding than sluggish, they will usually allow a man to approach in 

 the open to within less than a dozen yards, and sometimes he may almost lay 

 his hands on young and inexperienced birds, while several of these may con- 

 tinue to gaze at him with obviously serene unconcern immediately after he has 

 discharged his gTin directly over their heads. There are times, however, espe- 

 cially in calm weather, when the report of a gun, or the sound of one's paddle 

 striking against the side of a boat, will instantly startle all the solitary sand- 

 pipers within 20 rods, causing them to rise on wing with loud outcries, and to 

 fly off singly, in various directions, to more or less distant places. In summer 

 and autumn they invariably act thus independently of one another when flushed, 

 and also when engaged in feeding, although by no means averse to assembling 

 rather numerously where food is especially plentiful or easily obtained. 



Voice. — Mr. Nichols has described this very satisfactorily, in his 

 notes, as follows: 



The ordinary notes of the solitary sandpiper are very close to those of the 

 spotted, but probably always differentiable. They are sharper, cleaner cut, less 

 variable. The full-flight note is a sharp piping peep weep weep, more often 

 three than two syllabled when a bird is definitely leaving a locality, or by wan- 

 dering birds which ordinarily fly high. In birds flushed on, or making longer 

 or shorter flights to different parts of the same marsh where they were living, 

 the same note was usually double peep lueep, rarely single. 



A quite dissimilar call, less frequently heard, is a fine pit pit pit, or chi tit. 

 This may have no significance other than being a reduction of the preceding, 

 when the bird is less definitely on the wing, but seems to depend on their being 

 another individual fairly close by. There is likely homology between it and the 

 short flocking call of the lesser yellowlegs, and if correctly determined, a certain 

 analogy thereto is also established, perhaps as much as possible with this non- 

 social species. Of similar quality was a peculiar kiJcikiki from one of two birds 

 in company which came to decoys nicely, as they went on past my rig without 

 alighting. 



2316—29 2 



