Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



called down by anyone sufficiently familiar with their loud, 

 quivering, querulous whistle to imitate it. Sportsmen also use 

 decoys; but these are gentle, sociable birds, among the last to 

 suspect evil or to take alarm, and need little encouragement to 

 alight beyond the supposed entreaties of a sister flock. They 

 appear to be never in a hurry; the long journey to and from their 

 nesting grounds has frequent halting places; the mellow days of 

 early autumn find them free from care and ready to accept every 

 invitation to enjoy life to the full. 



Wheeling about as the imitation of their call reaches them, if 

 they are not perchance flying too high to hear it, down swings 

 the flock, hovering over the mud flats and tracts of low beach 

 exposed at ebb tide. After circling about and seeing none of 

 their kin, they may nevertheless decide to stop and rest awhile 

 and feed in so promising a field. Now they scatter, but never 

 so far that a chattering talk may not be kept up with their com- 

 panions while they look for snails, seeds of sedges, insects, small 

 mollusks, gravel, and bits of vegetable matter picked off the 

 surface or from the shallow pools in the salt marshes. Some- 

 times they probe the soft mud, too, for some tiny marine creature 

 that has buried itself there; but not commonly, as the woodcock 

 and Wilson's snipe do. A sand bar will often be so crowded 

 with these sociable little waders that the sportsman picks off a 

 dozen or more birds at a single shot; and so innocent are they 

 that even such a lesson does not prevent their returning to the 

 identical spot after a short flight. It is small wonder they are 

 favorites with shooters. 



Skimming over the marshes, swallow fashion, a flock darts 

 about in an erratic, joyous course — now high in air and performing 

 some beautiful evolutions, now close above the sedges — their 

 shrill, quivering whistle, constantly called back and forth, keeping 

 the neighborhood lively. The note can scarcely be distinguished 

 from the whistle of the yellowlegs that these snipe frequently 

 associate with as they do with various sandpipers. When on 

 the wing, the white spot on the lower back, a diagnostic feature, 

 is conspicuous enough to help the novice name the bird. 



A number of nests or depressions in the moss or grasses that 

 answered the purpose, have been found near lakes and marshes 

 at the far north by travellers who have brought back to our 

 museums clutches of four drab or fawn colored eggs spotted and 



207 



