THE SPOTTED SANDPIPER 



By HERBERT K. JOB 



THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES 

 Educational Leaflet No. 51 



The sight of a shore-bird has always given me a peculiar thrill. In 

 my boyhood I associated their bands with outings in summer or autumn 

 on the seacoast, when I tramped for miles over stretches of firmly-packed 

 sand by the booming surf on "the backside of the Cape" (Cape Cod), 

 or explored great salt marshes, luxuriating in briny odors and listening 

 ea-erly for the pipings of an approaching flock. An added charm of 

 im>tery and travel lingered about these waifs, which were more at-home 

 on the shores of the Arctic Sea than on beaches made commonplace by 

 hotels and merrymakers. They seemed to carry, like the lass of the 

 proverb, a "delicate air," so clean, so trim, so grace- . _ 

 ful were they. Thus the Spotted Sandpiper, as one g h re bird 

 of thtrse shore-birds, always brings to my imagination 

 a sweet little whiff of the sea-breeze; even in a potato-field it is a blessed 

 shore-bird still, and calls up impressions of the whole fascinating tribe. 



In many parts of the country the race of shore-birds would now be 

 unknown have vanished like lost arts and extinct races were it not 

 for our dear little "Teeter," the Spotted Sandpiper, which is by far the 

 commonest and most widely distributed shore-bird in North America 

 to-day. In answer to the inquiry as to where it is found, I would ask the 

 opposite question : Where is it not found ? This is not to assert that 

 it is swarming in every locality. Far from it, alas ! But there is hardly 

 a place on the continent, except in deep forest, where one need be sur- 

 prised to run across it. 



Like most other shore-birds, the Spotted Sandpiper is a great 

 traveler. One would hardly suspect the little pair, settled down for the 

 summer so tamely in a quiet farm-pasture, of being restless, and of 

 craving the excitement of foreign travel; yet, for aught we can tell, 

 these may be the selfsame birds that a certain explorer met last winter 

 away down in Peru, or Bolivia, or southern Brazil. F 



They are erratic in their movements and desires. ^j. 

 Though many of them remain in the Northern States 

 well into October, other individuals show themselves by the end of 

 July in the West Indies, Venezuela, or in Mexico. The returning 

 tourists appear in northern Florida near the end of March ; but it 

 takes them more than a month to travel to the vicinity of Xew York, 

 for there are no dining-cars on the routes they patronize, and they 

 work their passage in thorough and lei-urely fashion. 



901 



