206 WILD WINGS 



The Solitary Sandpiper is seen on the margins mostly of 

 woodland ponds and bogs. 



I may be mistaken, but it has usually seemed to me that 

 from about the twentieth of August to the first part of Sep- 

 tember there is a decided diminution in the numbers of many 

 of the shore-birds. It is largely the adults that have been 

 present hitherto. These pass on, and there is a gap between 

 this and the arrival of the young, which in a number of 

 species can be distinguished by a paler cast of plumage. 

 The young Ring-necks and Knots begin to appear by the 

 last of August ; young Black-bellied Plovers are not much in 

 evidence before the tenth of September, and the young of 

 the Golden Plovers, if they come at all, are often even later. 

 During the latter half of September and well into October 

 there are considerable flights of Winter Yellow-legs. At 

 this time, too, the Red-backed Sandpipers flock along the 

 beaches, a tardy tribe that the summer boarder knows 

 nothing of. Wilson's Snipe abounds on the meadows and 

 provides sport for the hunters. The hardiest of all the host 

 are the Purple Sandpipers, the only waders that habitually 

 spend their winters in the North. They can rarely bear the 

 tropical heat of a Boston winter, and Cape Ann is about as 

 far south as they commonly venture. They are abundant, 

 for instance, on Matinicus Island, Maine, all winter, feeding 

 among the rocks, and are called " Rock Snipe." 



There can be little doubt that, owing to the tremendous 

 persecution of the shore-birds in their southward flight along 

 the coast-line of New England and the Middle States, increas- 

 ing numbers of various species are learning to avoid this 

 dangerous zone and to pass us far out to sea, flying in the 

 spring from the capes of North Carolina or Virginia direct 

 to the Maritime Provinces, and in the autumn flight straight 

 back from Nova Scotia. Indeed, this has always been the 



