Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



slow but energetic wing-strokes, close to the ground, its head 

 raised high over the shoulders, and the tail hanging almost di- 

 rectly down. As it thus flies, it utters a succession of hollow, 

 booming notes, which have a strange ventriloquial quality. At 

 times the male rises twenty or thirty yards in the air, and, inflat- 

 ing its throat, glides down to the ground with its sac hanging 

 below. Again he crosses back and forth in front of the female, 

 pufTing his breast out, bowing from side to side, running here 

 and there. . , , Whenever he pursues his love making, his rather 

 low but pervading note swells and dies in musical cadences." 

 These liquid notes may be represented by a repetition of the 

 syllables too-u, too-u, too-u. Like certain members of the grouse 

 family, the skin of the throat and breast of the male becomes 

 very loose and flabby, like a dewlap, during the mating season, 

 and may be inflated at will to a size equalling that of the body. 

 Eggs brought to the Smithsonian Institution from tufts of grass 

 in meadows at the delta of the Yukon are greenish drab, spotted 

 and blotched with umber. 



When flocks of these sandpipers come down from Alaska 

 and Greenland in early autumn, we see them less commonly 

 scattered on the beaches, where one naturally looks for sand- 

 pipers, and usually in the salt marshes, or in meadows near 

 water, salt or fresh, running nimbly among the grasses, pattering 

 about in the pools, pecking at insects, snails, and other tiny 

 creatures above ground, or probing the soft mud or sand for 

 such as have buried themselves below. Silent, gentle, almost 

 tame, friendly with their allies and unsuspicious of foes, they lie 

 well to a dog, squat when danger comes near, and only when it 

 positively threatens fly off with a "squeaky, grating whistle." 

 Because they fly in a zig-zag, erratic course, they are frequently 

 called snipe, but they are true sandpipers, nevertheless. Decoys 

 rarely lure them, though an imitation of their whistle may. 

 In autumn we can see no indication of the extraordinary pectoral 

 sac that becomes so prominent in the bird's figure in June, 

 and that is responsible for the most characteristic of its many 

 popular names. 



The White-rumped, Schinz's, or Bonaparte's Sandpiper 

 ( Tringa fuscicollis), scarcely over seven inches long, looks like a 

 smaller copy of the preceding species, although on close scrutiny 



213 



