328 FIELD ZOOLOGY. 



of birds it is soft and sensitive to the very tip, being 

 provided with nerves and bloodvessels. 



This sensitiveness of the bill reaches its extreme 

 development among birds as a whole, in the woodcock 

 of the Limicolse. Here the upper mandible is soft and 

 flexible, cartilaginous rather than horny, and may be 

 moved upon the lower mandible up, down, around, and 



sidewise, with motions surpris- 

 ing in their freedom. When 

 one has had the rare privilege 

 of watching one of these sober- 

 visaged, grandfatherly birds 

 about his hourly task of digging 

 worms, he will understand the 

 meaning of this. The bird 

 buries its bill up to the head in 

 Fig. 112.— Semi-paimatedfootof ^j^e soft mud, and Cannot use 

 a p over. ^^^ Other sense than that of 



contact for knowing when it reaches the worm ; sight is 

 impossible under the circumstances. This seems true for 

 others of the Limicols. The snipes, the sandpipers, 

 and some of the plovers are guided less by the sense of 

 sight in finding their food than are the birds of most 

 other orders; and their bills are less horny, more carti- 

 laginous, and better fitted structurally to serve as sensory 

 organs. This characteristic of finding their food by 

 contact as well as by sight, is shared by the duck tribe, 

 who spoon up much of their food from the pond or the 

 river bed, taking their food "unsight, unseen." In 

 the division to which the snipes and the woodcocks 

 belong, the eyes are set so far back as to be just over the 

 ear openings. The plovers have the eye more nearly 

 in a median position. 



