S bore-bird Shooting 343 



northern Labrador and the Arctic Coast, from Fort Anderson to 

 Bering Straits, and possibly in Greenland. Winters from North 

 Carolina, casually north to Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, 

 Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, and 

 British Columbia, south to the Bermudas, Bahamas, West In- 

 dies, Mexico, Central America, and Brazil. Recorded from Great 

 Britain and Hawaii, and from Texas in summer. 



The best-known and most popular of all our 

 shore-birds, generously distributed over the 

 marshes of the interior and along the coast, from 

 as far north as the Arctic regions to the West 

 Indies and northern South America as a south- 

 ern range. There are few more welcome sounds 

 than his creaking note as he jumps from your 

 very feet in zigzag flight. Whatever else you 

 have in mind vanishes. You watch him until 

 a speck, still circling around, uncertain where to 

 drop ; now he settles, the spot is marked, you 

 approach carefully, watching every tussock in the 

 bog, knowing he is not ten feet off, yet feel he 

 will startle you just as much as he did at first, 

 and wish he would hurry up and jump and be 

 done with it ; but he takes his own time and prob- 

 ably waits until you have walked over him before 

 he repeats the trick of twisting himself out of 

 range. 



The Wilson's snipe is as erratic as his flight. 

 To-day you see him, to-morrow you don't. His 

 frequent borings in the soft mud are perhaps 

 the only trace of his previous presence. Here he 



