BARTRAMIAN SANDPIPER. 25 
pairs, as soon as they are ready to seek proper places for breeding in, 
for I have seldom found more than two pairs with nests or young in 
the same field or piece of ground. On their first arrival, they are ge- 
nerally thin, but on their return southward, in the beginning of Au- 
gust, when they tarry in Louisiana until the first of October, they are 
fat and juicy. I have observed, that in spring, when they are poor, 
they are usually much less shy than in autumn, when they are exceed- 
ingly wary and difficult of approach; but this general observation is not 
without exceptions, and the difference, I think, depends on the nature 
. of the localities in which they happen to be found at either period. 
When on newly ploughed fields, which they are fond of frequenting, 
they see a person at a greater distance than when they are searching 
for food among the slender grasses of the plains. I have also thought 
that the size of the flocks may depend upon similar contingencies, for 
this bird is by no means fond of the society of man. 
Like the Spotted Sandpiper, Totanus macularius, they not unfre- 
quently alight on fences, trees, and out-houses ; but whether in such 
situations or on the ground, they seldom settle without raising both 
wings upright to their full extent, and uttering their loud and pro- 
longed, but pleasing notes. ‘They run with great activity, stop sud- 
denly, and vibrate their body once or twice. When earnestly followed 
by the sportsman, they lower their heads in the manner of Witson’s 
Plover, and the species called the Piping, and run off rapidly, or squat, 
according to the urgency of the occasion. At other times, they par- 
tially extend their wings, run a few steps as if about to fly, and then 
cunningly move off sideways, and conceal themselves among the grass, 
or behind a clod. You are not unfrequently rendered aware of your 
being within sight of them, by unexpectedly hearing their plaintive 
and mellow notes, a circumstance, however, which I always concluded 
to be indicative of the wariness of their disposition, for although you 
have just heard those well-known cries, yet, on searching for the bird, 
you nowhere see it, for the cunning creature has slipped away and hid 
itself. When wounded in the wing, they run to a ereat distance, and 
are rarely found. 
Like all experienced travellers, they appear to accommodate them- 
selves to circumstances as regards their food, for in Louisiana, they 
feed on cantharides and other coleopterous insects ; in Massachusetts on 
grasshoppers, on which my friend Nurraut says, they soon grow very 
