84 The Life Worth Living 



season. The grayback snipe decoys beauti- 

 fully and is the toothsome quail of the shore 

 and marsh. 



But by far the most interesting sport of 

 the shore is when the red-breasted snipe 

 come suddenly trooping in from the mists of 

 the southern seas about the middle of May. 

 They feed almost exclusively on the mussels 

 of the ocean beaches at ebb-tide. They 

 usually appear about May 15, though their 

 advent varies by a week or so, according to 

 conditions of the spring weather. 



I have walked along the surf in the spring 

 on one day without seeing a single red-breast, 

 and have gone back the next morning and 

 found flocks of ten thousand chattering and 

 feeding. They came in the night out of dark- 

 ness and mystery, and they will go in two 

 weeks, as they came, into silence and mys- 

 tery. 



Where they go the Virginia hunter does 

 not know. Unlike the curlew and grayback, 



