Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



As you look down from your saddle into a dry field, the sharpest 

 eye often fails to see these birds squatting there until something 

 (but not the horse) frightens them and a good sized flock sur- 

 prises you when it takes wing. Three or four sharply whistled 

 notes ring in your very ears as the plovers mount. The swift 

 flight is well sustained. Mere specks seem to float across the 

 heavens, and were it not for the soft, clear rippling whistle that 

 descends from the clouds, who would imagine that these birds so 

 commonly seen on the ground would penetrate to such a height 

 above it ? In the migrations along the coast and inland, serried 

 ranks, flying high, cover immense distances daily. The pampas of 

 the Argentine Republic hold flocks that have gathered on our own 

 great plains, who shall say how soon after the journey was begun ? 

 On alighting, with their wings stretched high above their 

 backs in plover fashion, these true sandpipers remain perfectly 

 still for a minute, turning their slender necks now this way, now 

 that, to reconnoitre, before they gracefully walk or run off to 

 feed, bobbing their heads as if satisfied with the prospect as they 

 go. They must devour grasshoppers by the million another 

 reason why they should be protected. In the nesting season, at 

 least, the mates keep close together when feeding on berries and 

 insects, that, however largely consumed, fail to fatten their slender 

 bodies now. Anxiety, common to all true lovers and devoted 

 parents, keeps them thin. A few blades of dry grass line the 

 merest depression of the ground in some old field or open prairie 

 that answers as a cradle for the four clay colored eggs spotted 

 over with dark brown and clouded with purplish gray shell 

 marks. Funny, top-heavy, fluffy little chicks tumble clumsily 

 about through the grass in June. 



The Buff-breasted Sandpiper ( Tryngites subruficollis) closely 

 allied to the larger upland "plover," like it prefers dry fields and 

 grassy prairie lands, although during the migrations it too is often 

 met with on beaches on the coasts of both oceans. Its upper 

 parts are pale clay buff, the centre of each feather black or dark 

 olive; the inner half of the inner webs of the dusky primaries is 

 speckled with black, a diagnostic feature ; the longer inner wing 

 coverts are conspicuously marked and tipped with black edged 

 with white ; the feathers of under parts are pale buff edged with 

 white and indistinctly marked. A few of these migrants rest 



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