276 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



bay snipe-shooting worth the pains and who is naturally 

 nonplussed at finding sandpipers called, as it may happen, 

 snipes or plovers, and other species, which he may indis- 

 tinctly remember to have seen otherwise described, passing 

 under some barbarous cognomen, defying the skill of 

 (Edipus to decipher its sense from the sound. 



The next considerable family are the tattlers, three of 

 which are numerous on all the sea bays in their season 

 the yellow-shanks tattler, or lesser yellow legs, Totanus 

 Flavipes, easily decoyed, and affording great sport when 

 numerous ; the tell-tale tattler, Totanus Vociferus, a 

 far larger and more suspicious bird, detested by the fowler, 

 who never spares him, on account of his habit, whence 

 his name, of alarming all the marshes and hassocks with 

 his shrill shrieks; and lastly, the semipalmated tattler, 

 Totanus semipalmatus, better known as the " willet," 

 which name is given to him in imitation of his cry, which 

 is said to resemble the words " pill- will- willet," quickly 

 repeated, though, for my own part, I have never been able 

 to trace much similarity between the sound of written 

 words and the piercing whistles of these aerial wanderers. 



The willet is one of the best of these birds, and its 

 eggs, much resembling those of the English peewit, or 

 field plover, are really delicious. This is a shy and wary 

 bird in open and exposed situations, but is easily allured 

 to the decoys. 



There are many other varieties and families of these 

 birds, turnstoncs, sanderlings, dunlins usually known 

 as ox-birds, delicious little fellows, like flying pats of 

 butter, wheeling in countless flocks over the summits of 



