4 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



second the godwits, the third the sandpipers, the fourth 

 the tattlers, and the fifth the curlews. 



In the woodcock and true snipe the eye is placed high 

 up on the head, so that the ear is below it, and, as Dr. 

 Coues says, if the brain be examined it will be found 

 curiously tilted over so that its anatomical base looks 

 forward. The bill is straight and is much longer than 

 the head. It is deeply grooved almost to its very end, 

 where it is conspicuously swollen and soft. The soft, 

 sensitive covering of the bony bill is abundantly supplied 

 with nerves, and the bill is an instrument of touch by 

 which the bird feels in the soft earth where it feeds for 

 the food which it desires. Not only is the bill used 

 as a direct probe, but it is capable of being somewhat 

 bent in one way or another. Any one who has ever 

 compared the bill of the dried skin of a woodcock or a 

 snipe with that of a fresh specimen has probably noticed 

 that the dried bill is much shrunken and is also pitted, 

 showing where the more or less thin skin which covers 

 the bill has shrunken into the pits in its bony substance. 



Woodcock and the snipe differ from many of their al- 

 lies in not being gregarious. They do not gather in 

 great flocks and so cannot be destroyed in immense 

 numbers. On the other hand, they are very simple, 

 gentle birds, and the woodcock living in cover is easily 

 shot, though the snipe is better able to care for himself. 



The godwits are large birds with long, grooved bills 

 slightly turned up instead of down. They frequent wet 

 meadows and marshes as well as bays and estuaries, and 



