Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



Among the semipalmated, the least, and other sandpipers they 

 often hunt with, sanderlings may be readily picked out by the 

 attitude of the head and their fearful eagerness. Impressions of 

 their three toes (a plover characteristic) in the wet sand, at low 

 tide, cover a good feeding ground like fret work. Chasing out 

 after the receding breakers, picking up the minute shell fish, ma- 

 rine insects, shrimps, seeds of sedges, etc., strewn over the flats, 

 the active little troop outstrips the frothing waves on the back- 

 ward race with marvelous agility. Rarely, indeed, does the 

 curling foam reach the immaculate white under plumage; no 

 combing breaker ever drenches the sanderlings unawares, how- 

 ever absorbing their dinner appears to be; yet deep water has no 

 terrors for them. Wading is a frequent diversion, and swimming 

 becomes the safest resort for wounded birds. 



Bay men, who habitually carry guns and shoot at every- 

 thing wearing feathers, tell you that sanderlings are wary little 

 creatures, never so gentle and confiding as many sandpipers that 

 may be raked from a few yards; but possibly if these men car- 

 ried only field glasses, and kept up a reassunng peet-meet whistle 

 as they slowly approached a busy flock — a possibility to make 

 a longshoreman smile — the alleged timidity would be found to 

 disappear and the birds to remain. Startle them, and rising and 

 moving like one bird toward the sea, calling shrilly as they fly, 

 on they go along the coast line no further than a few hundred 

 yards, their bodies turning and twisting in the air, their under 

 parts glistening where the sunlight strikes them. Instantly, on 

 alighting, the flock begins to feed again. Follow these birds to 

 Florida in winter, and one finds apparently the same ones still 

 feeding. Captain Feilden, the naturalist in General Greely's 

 Arctic expedition, reported sanderlings in flocks of knots and 

 turnstones, and a nest in latitude 82° 33' north. It was on a gravel 

 ridge above the sea, and the eggs (three or four light olive brown, 

 finely spotted and speckled with darker) were deposited in a 

 slight depression among ground willow plants, the lining of the 

 nest consisting of a few withered leaves and dry catkins. 



220 



