TELL-TALE GODWIT, OR SNIPE. 495 
nor with any person acquainted with its particular place or manner of 
breeding, I must reserve these matters for further observation. It isa 
plentiful species, and great numbers are brought to market in Boston, 
New York, and Philadelphia, particularly in autumn. Though thes 
birds do not often penetrate far inland, yet, on the 5th of September, 
I shot several dozens of them in the meadows of Schuylkill, below 
Philadelphia. There had been a violent north-east storm a day or twa 
previous, and a large flock of these, accompanied by several species of 
Tringa, and vast numbers of the Short-tailed Tern, appeared at once 
among the meadows. Asa bird for the table, the Yellow-Shanks, when 
fat, is in considerable repute. Its chief residence is in the vicinity of 
the sea, where tliere are extensive mud-flats. It has a sharp whistle, 
of three or four notes, when about to tyke winyz,and when flying. 
These birds may be shot down with great facility, if the sportsman, 
after the first discharge, will only lie close, and permit the wounded 
birds to flutter about without picking them up; the flock will generally 
make a circuit, and alight repeatedly, until the greater part of them 
may be shot down. 
Length of the Yellow-Shanks, ten inches; extent, twenty; bill, 
slender, straight, an inch and a half in length, and black ; line over the 
eye, chin, belly, and vent, white; breast and throat, gray; generz: 
color of the plumage above, dusky brown olive, inclining to ash, thickly 
marked with small triangular spots of dull white ; tail-coverts, white ; 
tail, also white, handsomely barred with dark olive ; wings, plain dusky, 
the secondaries edged, and all the coverts edged and tipped with white ; 
shafts, black ; eye, also black ; legs and naked thighs, long and yellow ; 
outer toe, united to the middle one by a slight membrane; claws, a 
horn color. The fernale can scarcely be distinguished from the male. 
TELL-TALE GODWIT, OR SNIPE.—SCOLOPAX VOCIFERUS. 
— Fic. 232. 
Stone Snipe, Arct. Zool. p.468, No. 376. — Turt. Syst. p. 396. — Peale’s Museum, 
No. 3940. 
TOTANUS MELANOLEUCUS. — Viei.iot.* 
T. melanoleucus, Ord’s reprint of Wils. p. 61. — Bonap. Synop. p. 324. 
Tuts species and the preceding are both well known to our Duck 
gunners along the sea-coast and marshes, by whom they are detested, 
* Bonaparte, in his Nomenclature, remarks, ‘‘ This bird is undoubtedly the S. 
melanoleucu of Gmelin and Latham, first made known by Pennant. Why Wilson. 
who was aware of this, should have changed the name, we are at a loss to conceive. 
Mr. Ord was, therefore, right in restoring it.” 
The species has not been discovered out of North America, and will take the 
place in that country of the European Greenshank. 
Totanus is a genus of Bechstein, now generally acknowledged as the proper place 
for the Sandpipers of this form. Many of them do not undergo so decicled a chang 
during the breeding season, breca more inland, and, during winter, are as frequent; 
