FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 2J\ 



Tl)e Greater Vtellowlegs. 



In the early days of American ornithology that part of the ocean front known as 

 the New Jersey coast, before it was sought by thousands of summer visitors, was a 

 veritable paradise for birds that love the shore. Where now stand great hotels and 

 scarcely less palatial private homes, surrounded by well-kept lawns and ornamented 

 by strange and beautiful flowers, there was then a barren, windswept waste of suc- 

 cessive sandy beaches, with frequent inlets to lagoons and creeks bordered by wide 

 marshes of salt grass, and in these solitudes nature reigned supreme. Nowhere, 

 perhaps, is there a more conspicuous example of the changes wrought by the resist- 

 less advance of civilization. Conspicuous among the birds that in myriads ranged 

 along these shores was the subject of this present sketch. 



Breeding from the Northern United States to the Arctic regions, it reaches, at 

 least in winter, as far to the southward as Patagonia ; and hardly an area of notable 

 size exists, from ocean to ocean, where this bird is not found at some season of the 

 year. While it is not known to breed except as above stated, it has been observed 

 in summer in Texas, in Florida, and in the pampas region of Argentina and Uruguay. 

 Could the yellowlegs be endowed with speech, its present reputation leads to the 

 presumption that many of its now mysterious actions would be speedily explained, 

 for our bird bears a stigma that its exceeding loquaciousness has earned — the same 

 that is often applied to people who talk too much, whether they say anything or 

 not — the epithet " Tell-tale." Whether or not justly applied, this name is supposed 

 to indicate that the bird by its cries warns all other game of the approach of the 

 sportsman. 



The greater yellowlegs is fully as common in the interior as along the coast, and 

 frequents the muddy shores of ponds, lakes and streams in search of insects, worms, 

 crustaceans and small fishes. In pursuit of these it has at times a peculiar habit of 

 running rapidly along through shallow water with its bill under the surface, which 

 action impresses the beholder more as a matter of sport than of anything more seri- 

 ous. Sometimes several individuals take part in this performance, one behind the 

 other. In small flocks or singly this species mingles freely with other waders, and at 

 times accepts the society even of the smaller ducks. When on the wing it is easily 

 called by imitation of its clear whistle. As it alights upon flat or shoal it raises its 

 wings straight into the air for a moment or two, as though stretching, or as if feeling 

 insecure of its footing, and when a whole flock perform the same movement simul- 

 taneously, the effect is curious and pleasing in the extreme. 



The nest of this species is an inconsequential affair of grass, sunk in the ground in 



