Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



Least Sandpiper 



(Iringa minutilla) 



Called also: PEEP; MEADOW OX-EYE; STINT; WILSON'S 

 STINT; SANDPEEP 



Length — 6 inches. Smallest of our sandpipers. 



Male and Female — In summer : Upper parts dingy brown, the 

 feathers edged with chestnut or buff; the lower back and 

 upper tail coverts plain black, like the central tail feathers; 

 outer tail feathers ashy gray. Line over eye, throat, sides, and 

 underneath white, more buffy, and distinctly streaked with 

 blackish brown on neck and breast. (Immature birds have 

 not these distinct streaks.) In winter: General appearance 

 gray and white; upper parts brownish gray; breast white 

 or pale gray ; not distinctly streaked ; other parts white. Bill 

 black ; legs greenish ; toes without webs. 



Range — North America at large; nesting in the Arctic regions and 

 wintering from the Gulf states to South America. 



Season — Transient visitor; May; July to October. 



Flocks of these mites of sandpipers, often travelling with 

 their semipalmated cousins, whose popular names are indiscrimi- 

 nately applied to them also, come out of the far north just as 

 early as the young are able to make the long journey. Chicks 

 that in June leave the drab or yellowish eggs thickly spotted 

 with chestnut brown, run from the mossy ground-nest at once ; 

 and in July, when family parties begin to congregate in Labrador, 

 join the whirling companies of adults in many a preliminary wing 

 drill before descending to the States. Innocent of evil, confiding, 

 sociable, lively little peepers, their tiny bodies offering less than a 

 bite to a hungry man, neither their faith in us nor their pathetic 

 smallness protects them from the pot hunters. True sportsmen 

 scorn to touch them. A single pot shot may and usually does 

 kill a score of birds; yet, so ignorant are they of man and his 

 inventions, the startling report of a gun drives them upward but 

 a few yards for a confused whirl en masse that ends on the ground 

 where it began, and often before the dead and wounded victims 

 can be picked up. Celia Thaxter's lines on the little sandpiper 

 charmingly describe its touching confidence. 



2IS 



