FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 269 



Tl)e Dowifd)er. 



Familiar alike to sportsman and naturalist, the dowitcher, or red-breasted snipe, 

 is held in high regard by both, and is, moreover, as happens so frequently of birds, 

 a refutation of that old adage about the contempt-breeding influence of intimate 

 acquaintance. Along the ocean shore of the Eastern United States it is one of the 

 best known of all the various shore birds, in many places being exceedingly abun- 

 dant ; and while of less conspicuous presence in the interior, is even there at certain 

 times and places common and of regular occurrence. Although preeminently a 

 species of Eastern North America, it occurs also, though quite irregularly, in Alaska 

 and some of the Western United States; but of its common distribution the great 

 Mississippi Valley may be considered to form the western limit. It ranges from the 

 shores of the Arctic Ocean to the tropics of Brazil, spending a large part of its 

 yearly life in journeyings to and fro between these widely separated regions ; and it 

 sometimes finds itself astray in Great Britain or France. In the course of these 

 seasons of wandering it reaches the coast of the Middle Atlantic States in April and 

 August — during the former, passing with comparative rapidity on its way to a sum- 

 mer home in the far north, but on its return tarrying long by the way. Curiously 

 enough, it has been found throughout the summer in some of the extreme South- 

 ern States, but no evidence of its breeding there has been obtained. 



This is a bird of many names, as the following, in addition to those already 

 mentioned, bear witness: Gray snipe; brown snipe; New York godwit ;- brown- 

 back; robin snipe; gray-back; quail snipe; German snipe; driver. Mr. Trumbull 

 explains the name "Dowitcher" as a corruption of the German " Deutscher" 

 employed at first to distinguish this, the " German " snipe, from its relative the 

 "English" snipe; and this name, clinging with the tenacity of so many slang 

 expressions, has survived to the present day as one of the bird's best known desig- 

 nations. The confusion which has arisen by failure to distinguish between this 

 species and its western representative, the long-billed dowitcher (JMacrorliampJins 

 scolopaceus), has caused an indiscriminate application of names that renders it dif- 

 ficult to separate the various accounts of the two. 



In habits the dowitcher is rather more like a sandpiper than a. snipe, gathering 

 into flocks that often reach great size, and then as at other times evincing a prefer- 

 ence for sandy shores or mud flats, rather than grassy swamps, although, particu- 

 larly in the interior, frequenting the meadow ponds and the boggy margins of small 

 lakes. When in a flock these birds approach a favorite feeding-ground, they alight 

 usually in a compact mass, remain thus for a little time, then scatter about in pursuit 

 of their food, which often they obtain by perpendicular probing in the mud, after 



