680 THE LONG-BILLED CURLEW. 
never-ending habit of teetering: ‘The fore part of the body is lowered a 
little, the head drawn in, the legs slightly bent, while the hinder parts and tail 
are alternately hoisted with a peculiar jerk, and drawn down again with the 
regularity of clock work.” This strange motion has won for the bird the 
name Tip-up and Teeter-tail, and gives it an air of mock solemnity which is 
only heightened by the Quaker drab adornment of the upperparts and the 
apparently serious view of life which the owner takes. Absurd as the action 
is in adults, it tests the risibles still more sorely when a toddling youngster, 
bristling with pin-feathers, discovers the same uncontrollable ambition in his 
rear parts, and says, How-do-you-do backward, with imperturbable gravity. 
Arriving in its accustomed haunts about the middle of April, the Spotted 
Sandpiper immediately makes its presence known by notes which altho of 
trifling import, are particularly sweet and welcome. Peet-weet, or weet, weet, 
weet, weet, says the bird on all possible occasions, and a boat-ride on lake or 
river loses half its charm without the frequent interruption of this wayside 
greeting. 
The Peet-weet's nest is usually a little removed from the water's edge, 
placed a few rods back among the stunted willows and rank grasses of the 
upper sand stratum of the beach, or else sunk somewhere upon a grass-grown 
bank. The birds are not always discreet in the matter of concealment, and 
will sometimes steal to the nest or visit it openly, while search is being con- 
ducted in the immediate neighborhood. The eggs, nortnally four in number, 
are immense for the size of the bird, and, as a consequence, the young are so 
well found at birth that they are able to scamper off with never a thought 
for the unusually substantial cushion of leaves and dried grasses which has 
harbored them in embryo. 
No. 277. 
LONG-BILLED CURLEW,. 
Vs, O. U. No. 264. Numenius americanus [echstein. 
Synonyms.—SIcKLE-BILL. HEN CURLEW. 
Description.—Adult: General color ochraceous-buff to pale cinnamon- 
rufous; upperparts varied with dusky, in broad streaks on crown, in narrow 
streaks on sides of head and neck, in heavy, central, “herring-bone,” connected 
bars on back and tertials, and so variously mottled thruout, only the outer webs of 
outer primaries being of solid color—dusky; below, sharply streaked on breast 
and sides, sometimes sparingly barred with blackish, the ground color reaching 
its greatest purity and intensity on axillars; bill very long, considerably decurved 
toward tip; the culmen brownish dusky, the lower mandible yellow at base and 
