310 THE BIRDS OF DEVON. 



Family SCOLOPACID^. 

 THE SANDPIPERS AND SNIPES. 



The great family of tlie Scolopacidc? includes a number 

 of interesting birds, whose haunts are moors and marshes, 

 the edges of inland pools and streams, and the sand-flats 

 and oozes of the coast. Among them are included such 

 familiar hirds as those favourites of the sportsman, tlie 

 Woodcock and the Snipe. Few of them are ever to be 

 seen unless they are sought for in the special localities 

 they frequent, highly cultivated land being avoided by 

 them as affording little prospect of their needed fcod. 

 Tliey are nearly all migrants to our country from high 

 latitudes, and some of them seek such distant nesting- 

 quarters that their eggs are still almost unknown. Although 

 this family has been for years the object of our special 

 search, and we have wandered far and wide after them, 

 over many a mile of marsh and by many a shore, yet we 

 have (gained more knowledije into their habits from a few 

 visits to the Fish House at the Zoological Gardens than 

 we could ever have acquired from only flushing and 

 shooting them in their wild state. A few examples of 

 the rarer Sandpipers visiting our country have been kept 

 alive at various times at the Zoological Gardens, and by 

 Avatching them we have had revealed to our eyes many a 

 secret — f.. g.^ what the Ruff does, when he feeds and drinks, 

 with his seemingly inconvenient excess of neck-feathers; 

 how the Godwits and Avocets work their long and strange- 

 shaped beaks in procuring food, and so on ; even the 

 Knots and Common Sandpipers, when studied at the 

 distance of a few inches, became better known to us than 

 they had been before. Most of the birds of this family 

 have more or less elongated legs and toes, which bear them 



