THE MARSHES IN APRIL 



spotted sand-pipers whose grotesque bobbing 

 up and down have given them their nick- 

 names. They are oftenest found singly, and 

 they assume such an absurd air of importance 

 at the sight of a man, that it might be imag- 

 ined they were first in the list of game-birds. 

 They will run a few paces, tilt their bodies 

 up and down, skim along a few yards far- 

 ther, bob again, and finally take wing in a 

 jerky, irregular way with a petulant cry at 

 being disturbed. 



Along the sides of these little " slues," at 

 the edges and among the boggy spots, the 

 jack-snipe, true game-bird and cunning, hides. 

 You will not see him one time in five hun- 

 dred until he flies. And then with what a 

 bound he is in the air, twisting, gyrating, 

 and reeling off the yards of space. He 

 usually gets up with a startled " skeap, 

 skeap," as if he could not rid himself of 

 nervousness at the nearness of man. If he 

 has not been shot at much, he may pitch 

 down seventy-five or a hundred yards away, 

 spreading out his wings as he lights so that 

 you can see the barred appearance of his un- 

 der wing feathers. In the fields next to the 



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