The Spotted Sandpiper 



Taken in Modoc County 



business there besides looking in the mirror, we could not suppose that he 

 is altogether insensible to the flattery of the smooth-flowing stream. It is 

 for this reason, perhaps, that he prefers the vicinity of quiet inland or 

 upland waters; and it is this also — what else? — that tempts him to make 



from time to time little horizontal 

 excursions, or loops, of flight out over 

 the river or placid lake. If fright- 

 ened, as by a boatman, the bird may 

 patter along the muddy brim, or 

 remove by short flights, but sooner 

 or later he puts off from shore, edges 

 out over the water, wheels about in 

 a great circle, and draws near his 

 starting point again, in a graceful 

 curve which regards the shore as a 

 sort of asymtote — this on wings held 

 stiffly, or quivering with emotion. 



Peet-weet would be a second 

 choice for a name, even though these 

 petty syllables quite fail to express 

 the emotional, vibrant qualities of 

 the bird's cries, or the ringing clear- 

 ness with which they resound from 

 shore to shore. Peeet weet, weet, weet, 

 weet! What "naturalized" Califor- 

 nian has not heard that endearing 

 sound coming most unexpectedly 

 from a river-bar in some wild canyon 

 of the Sierras, or from the edge of 

 some emerald lake nestling in the embrace of snow-banks? What! our 

 little Peet-weet up here? How different these from the sluggish waters of 

 the Piscataqua, or the prosaic shores of Bullhead Lake. Yet the voice is 

 the same, — amiable, alert, sweetly piercing, authentic. It is the same 

 bird, too, a fellow Easterner quite at home in this giddy, awful West. 

 "Tip-up," or Teeter-tail, comes next, and the California bird is as little 

 restrained in his actions by the presence of frowning Sierras as he was by 

 the laughing birches of Vermont. Here, too, he has the never-ending 

 habit of teetering: "The fore part of the body is lowered a little, the head 

 drawn in, the legs slightly bent, while the hinder parts and tail are alter- 

 nately hoisted with a peculiar jerk, and drawn down again with the regu- 

 larity of clock work." This strange motion, which has won for the bird 

 its most familiar trivial name, gives it also an air of mock solemnity, 



1280 



Photo by the Author 



BABY ALL ALONE 



