276 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
bay snipe-shooting worth the pains—and who is naturally 
nonplussed at finding sandpipers called, as it may happen, 
snipes or plovers, and other species, which he may indis- 
tinctly remember to have seen otherwise described, passing 
under some barbarous cognomen, defying the skill of 
Cidipus to decipher its sense from the sound. 
The next considerable family are the tattlers, three of 
which are numerous on all the sea bays in their season— 
the yellow-shanks tattler, or lesser yellow legs, Totanus 
Flavipes, easily decoyed, and affording great sport when 
numerous; the tell-tale tattler, Totanus Vociferus, a 
far larger and more suspicious bird, detested by the fowler, 
who never spares him, on account of his habit, whence 
his name, of alarming all the marshes and hassocks with 
his shrill shrieks; and lastly, the semipalmated tattler, 
Totanus semipalmatus, better known as the “ willet,” 
which name is given to him in imitation of his ery, which 
is said to resemble the words “ pill-will-willet,” quickly 
repeated, though, for my own part, I have never been able 
to trace much similarity between the sound of written 
words and the piercing whistles of these aerial wanderers. 
The willet is one of the best of these birds, and its 
eggs, much resembling those of the English peewit, or 
field plover, are really delicious. This is a shy and wary 
‘bird in open and exposed situations, but is easily allured 
to the decoys. 
There are many other varieties and families of these 
birds, turnstones, sanderlings, dunlins—usually known 
as ox-birds, delicious little fellows, like flying pats of 
butter, wheeling in countless flocks over the summits of 
