648 AVES—SNIPE. 
are very eagerly suught after by our gunners. Their food consists of small 
worms, slugs, and the larve of insects. During the breeding season, while 
it plays over the moors, this bird makes a pleasing, humming, and pip.ng 
sound. Their flesh is justly reckoned among feathered dainties. 
From the point of the bill, to the end of the tail, the snipe measures about 
twelve inches, and from the point of each wing, when extended, about fif- 
teen or sixteen; the head is divided longwise by a pale red line, parallel to 
which on each side, is a black line, and over the eyes there runs another line 
pretty much of the same color as that on the middle of the head. The 
feathers that spring from the shoulders reach almost as far as the end of the 
tail, the outward half from the shaft being of a pale red. 
THE WILLET, OR SEMIPALMATED SNIPE,! 
Is peculiar to America, and is one of the most noisy and noted birds that 
inhabit our salt marshes in summer. Its common food is willet. It arrives 
from the south on the shores of the middle states, about the beginning of 
May; and from that time till the last of July, its loud and shrill reiterations 
of pill-will-willet, pill-will-willet, resound almost incessantly along the 
marshes, and may be distinctly heard at the distance of more than a mile 
Their nests are built on the ground among the grass of the marshes, and are 
composed of wet rushes and coarse grass. - 
The anxiety and affection manifested by this bird for its eggs and young, 
are truly interesting. A person no sooner enters the marshes, than he is 
beset by the willets flying around and skimming over his head, vociferating 
with great violence their common cry of pill-will-willet ; and uttering at 
times a loud clicking note as he approaches nearer to their nest. As they 
occasionally alight, and slowly shut their long white wings speckled with 
black, they have a mournful note, expressive of great tenderness. They 
chiefly subsist on small shell-fish, marine worms, and aquatic insects. They 
have a summer and also a winter dress, in its colors differing so much in 
these seasons, as scarcely to be known as the same species. 
There are other individuals of this tribe, common in the United States, 
which we have not room to describe. 
1 Scolopax semipalmata, WiLa0n. 
