A SAND-PIPER OF MANY NAMES. 43 



toe connected with the middle one by a large membrane. The color of 

 the upper parts is brownish green, with a somewhat metallic or bronzed 

 lustre, marked by many lines, arrow-heads, and spots of brownish black, 

 also lustrous ; under parts white, with many circular and oval spots of 

 brownish black, largest on the abdomen ; wings greenish brown, crossed 

 by a narrow bar of white; outer feathers of the tail tipped with white 

 and barred with black ; line over the eye, white. 



Its systematic name is Tringoides macularius, but its common names 

 are many and various — spotted sand-piper, little spotted sand-piper, or sand- 

 lark (at Lake Superior, to distinguish it from the "solitary" and per- 

 haps other species of beach- birds), outter-snipe (northern Maryland), 

 fly-up-the-creek (a name also applied to a small heron), all of which refer 

 to its shape and affinities. Derived from its high-pitched, peevish, yet 

 musical cry, are peeweet, peet-weet, and weet-bird, the latter used by old 

 Brickell, who says, " so called from their Weeting or cry before Rain." 

 Another set of names includes wagtail (Newfoundland), teeter-snipe, teeter- 

 tail, tip-up, and the like, all describing an action very characteristic of 

 the bird, which, whenever it alights, or pauses in its running, begins at 

 once to mince and teeter upon its legs, lifting and dropping its tail, and 

 rising and sinking on elastic, half-bending toes, as though it were perpet- 

 ually courtesying, and hoped by an excessive show of good-manners to 

 win your notice, and so get a chance to make some humble petition. This 

 teetering, courtesying, balancing action, recalling Dryden's picture of 



"The mincing lady-prioress and the broad-speaking wife of Bath," 



is quite different from the flirting nervousness of the other bird we have 

 made this walk especially to seek. 



Following the windings of the growing stream down past the mead- 

 ows into the woods, where it prowls about the bare roots of old trees, and 

 plunges over a rocky bottom between banks covered to the water's edge 

 with thickets and fern-brakes, we are pretty sure to find one or two lit- 

 tle birds that rarely leave such sequestered spots. These are the two 

 cousins of the oven-bird — 



THE WATEE-THEUSHES, OE WAGTAILS. 



Very pleasant little people to know are both of them, although it is not 

 at all easy to make their acquaintance, since they are shy of being watched, 

 and secrete themselves in the most out-of-the-way places, but always 

 in the close vicinity of the water. The small-billed or New- York wag- 

 tail is not uncommon in the northern part of the United States through 



