96 SPOTTED SANDPIPER. 
has probed for earthworms with his long, sensitive bill, 
the upper mandible of which, as Mr. Gordon Trumbull 
has discovered, the bird can use as a finger. 
The Woodcock’s nest is made of dried leaves, and the 
four large, pear-shaped eggs are buff, spotted with shades 
of reddish brown. The young are born covered with 
rich chestnut and buff down, and can run as soon as 
dry. 
as a songster the Woodcock is unique among our 
summer birds. Ordinarily sedate and dignified, even 
pompous in his demeanor, in the spring he falls a victim 
to the passion which is accountable for so many strange 
customs in the bird world. 
If some April evening you visit the Woodcock’s 
haunts at sunset, you may hear a loud, nasal note repeated 
at short intervals—peent, peent. It resembles the call of 
a Nighthawk, but is the Woodcock sounding the first 
notes of his love song. He is on the ground, and as you 
listen, the call ceases and the bird springs from the ground 
to mount skyward on whistling wings. He may rise 
three hundred feet, then, after a second’s pause, one hears 
a twittering whistle and the bird shoots down steep 
inclines earthward. Unless disturbed, he will probably 
return to near the spot from which he started and at 
once resume his peenting. This, with the twittering 
note, is vocal; the whistling sound, heard as the bird rises, 
is produced by the rapid passage of air through its stif- 
fened primaries. 
Our only other common summer resident Snipe is the 
Spotted Sandpiper. It frequents the shores of lakes, 
Spotted Sandpiper, PONds, and rivers, and is also found 
Actitis macularia, near the sea, but wherever seen may be 
Plate XI. known by its singular tipping, teter- 
ing motion, which has given it the names of Tip-up and 
Teter Snipe. It is also called Peet-weet, from its sharp 
