Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



we note that its central tail feathers are not long and sharply 

 pointed, and that its longer upper tail coverts are white instead of 

 blackish. These white tail coverts, so conspicuous in flight, 

 help to define the bird from Baird's Sandpiper, that has dingy 

 olive brown coverts; but we must depend upon the white- 

 rumped bird's larger size, chiefly, to tell it from the semipalmated 

 sandpiper. This is a sociable little wader, often flocking with 

 its cousins, and so offering frequent opportunities for comparison 

 of these often confused species. In winter the upper parts are 

 plain brownish gray, and the streaks on neck, breast, and sides 

 are less distinctly streaked. No striking peculiarities of habit 

 distinguish it: it is a peaceful, gentle, friendly, active, little sprite, 

 like the majority of its kin; too confiding, often, to save its body 

 from the ultimate fate of the gridiron and the skewer. Its note 

 is a piped weet, weet. 



Baird's Sandpiper (Tringa bairdii), far more common in the 

 interior than on the Atlantic coast, closely resembles the white- 

 rumped species in size and plumage, and may be distinguished 

 from it "by the fuscous instead of white middle upper tail-cov- 

 erts," says Mr. Frank Chapman. "In summer it differs also in 

 the absence of rufous above, the less heavily spotted throat, and 

 the white instead of spotted sides. In winter the chief distin- 

 guishing marks of the two species, aside from the differently col- 

 ored upper tail-coverts, are the buffy breast and generally 

 paler upper parts of bairdii." Colonel Goss says these sand- 

 pipers are more inclined to wander from the water's edge 

 than the white-rumped species, whose habits they otherwise 

 closely resemble, and that he has flushed them on high prairie 

 lands at least a mile from the water. 



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