GAME-BIRDS ? 223, 
“The spotted Sandpiper, in my girlhood, was here, with 
us, a familiar bird of moist meadows and pond edges, and 
every season I used to see them stepping about the stones 
in the little brook that flows through the river woods, 
across the meadow above the orchard. They frequently 
nested there, also, and I have often seen the buff, chocolate, 
spotted eggs. I have seen the birds wading in the stream 
quite up to their bodies, sometimes dragging their legs 
after them as children do in play; they can also swim, 
when they wish to cross a stream without taking to wing, 
and it is said, when hard pressed or wounded, can dive 
deep and swim, or rather, fly under water very swiftly, 
for they use the wings as the Loon does. Teeter and 
Tip-up are two of its common names, because it seems to be 
always balancing in order not to tumble over. If you 
startle it, it gives a frightened cry like ‘peet-weet-weet,’ 
as it rises, but soon drops again. 
“This bird has a list of good deeds as an insect eater 
to plead for its removal from the list of game-birds. Birds 
consume the most insects in the nesting season when the 
quick-growing young require constant feeding, and, as it 
breeds all over North America as far as Hudson Bay, 
you can see that the Spotted Sandpiper’s field of usefulness 
is very wide, and wherever he goes, following the sun as 
he does throughout the seasons, his value, aside from his 
dainty beauty, does not lie in the morsel of food he would 
make for those short sighted enough to shoot him, but in 
the insects of all sorts, including grasshoppers and locusts, 
he kills in the simple process of getting a living. 
“ Another bird of the moist meadows of rivers and salt 
creeks is the Killdeer or Little Ring-necked Plover. It 
