BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
143 
The young are very timid creatures, and keep close to their parents, 
who manifest considerable solicitude for their well-being. They watch over 
their helpless infancy, so to speak, with a care which a human mother 
only knows, and when their lives are imperiled, resort to many a ruse 
to deceive their enemies, and bring them into places of safety. By a 
peculiar alarm, when severely pressed, the mother warns them of the con- 
dition of things, and while they are scattering in different directions, she 
seeks to attract attention to herself in many a well-feigned artifice. After 
the danger is past, by a familiar call she summons them together, and 
doubtless relates to them the story of her adventures, and the dangers to 
which they were exposed. Their food consists of worms, animalcula, ants 
and other soft-bodied insects, which the parents assist them in procuring 
from the soft earth, and beneath the grass and dead leaves that abound 
in the places which they frequent. Later on, they are able to obtain 
their subsistence with the address of older birds, by thrusting their bills 
into the soil, and in such other places as w'ould be likely to contain the 
objects desired. Their tongues being covered with a viscid saliva, the food 
adheres thereto, and is drawn into the mouth without danger of being- 
lost. Gunners, as well as those who have made these birds a study, have 
often met with holes which have been made in the soft mud by their 
bills. The ]3resence of these “ borings,” as they are called, is always con- 
sidered as an indication that game is not very far distant, which a thorough 
exploration of the surrounding country soon reveals to be the fact. The 
young having thoroughly matured, continue in the same haunts with their 
parents, and, unless brought to an untimely death by the merciless gun of 
the hunter, repair to the warm, sunny, smiling South with the return of 
frost. 
The eggs of this species are less pyriform than waders’ mostly are, 
being, in some instances, almost ovoidal. Their ground-color varies from 
a light clay to one of buffy -brown, and the markings occur in the form 
of fine spots and blotches of chocolate-brown, interspersed with others 
of obscure lilac, scattered more or less thickly over the surface of the egg. 
