216 BIRDS 



theirs, they must be able to swim; but who ever sees them 

 in deep water? They merely ride on an incoming wave 

 when it overtakes them, and are washed ashore. 



General Greely found them nesting in Grinnell Land in 

 July, the males doing most of the incubating as is custom- 

 ary in the plover family, whose females certainly have ad- 

 vanced ideas. Downy little chicks run about as soon after 

 leaving the egg as they are dry. In August the advance 

 guard of southbound flocks begin to arrive in the United 

 States from the Arctic Circle en route for Brazil — quite a 

 journey in the world to test the fledglings' wings. 



The Least Sandpiper 



The least sandpipers, peeps, ox-eyes or stints, as they are 

 variously called, are only about the size of sparrows — ^too 

 small for any self-respecting guimer to bag, therefore they 

 are stiU abundant. Their light, dingy-brown and 

 gray, finely speckled backs are about the color of the 

 mottled sand they run over so nimbly, and their 

 breasts are as white as the froth of the waves that almost 

 never touch them. Beach birds become marvellously 

 quick in reckoning the fraction of a second when they must 

 run from under the combing wave about to break over 

 their little heads. Plovers rely on their fleet feet to escape 

 a wetting. Least sandpipers usually fly upward and on- 

 ward if a deluge threatens; but they have a similar cousin, 

 the semipaJmated (half-webbed) sandpiper that swims 

 well when the unexpected water suddenly lifts it oflf its feet. 



These busy, cheerful, sprightly little peepers are always 

 ready to welcome to their flocks other birds — ring-necked 

 plovers, tiu-nstones, snipe, and phalaropes. If by no other 



