252 Birds Every Child Should Know 



ever you may choose to call ^t? As if it had 

 not yet decided whether to be a beach bird or 

 a woodland dweller, a wader or a perching 

 songster, it is equally at home along the sea- 

 shore or on wooded uplands, wherever ditches, 

 pools, streams, creeks, swamps, and wet mea- 

 dows furnish its favourite foods. It stays 

 with us through the long summer. Did you 

 ever see it go through any of the queer motions 

 that have earned for it so many names ? Jerk- 

 ing up first its head, then its tail, it walks with 

 a funny, bobbing, tipping, see-saw gait, as if 

 it were self-conscious and conceited. Still 

 another popular name was given from its sharp 

 call peet-weet, peet-weet, rapidly repeated, and 

 usually uttered as the bird flies in graceful 

 curves over the water or inland fields. 



WOODCOCK 



Called also: Blind, Wall-eyed, Miid, Bigheaded, 

 Wood, and Whistling Snipe; Bog-sucker; Bog- 

 bird; Timber Doodle 



Whenever you see little groups of clean-cut 

 holes dotted over the earth in low, wet ground, 

 you may know that either the woodcock or 

 Wilson's snipe has been there probing for worms. 

 Not even the woodpecker's combination tool 



