SOOLOP ACID M — THE SNIPE FAMILY — MICROPALAMA. 
203 
The Stilt Sandpiper occurs as a migrant in the interior, especially in the spring. 
Professor Kumlien has procured it in Southern Wisconsin, and the Natural History 
Society of Boston have received from him several tine specimens in the breeding- 
plumage. Professor F. H. Snow, of Lawrence, Kansas, informs us that some six or 
eight specimens were taken in that neighborhood in September, 1874. 
Richardson refers to this species as the Douglas Sandpiper, and mentions that it 
is not uncommon in the Fur Country up to, and probably beyond, the 60th parallel. 
It frequents the interior in the breeding-season, and resorts to the flat shores of Hud- 
son’s Bay in the autumn, previous to taking its departure south. It was found by Mr. 
MacFarlaue breeding on the Arctic coast. This species is said by Leotaud to be a 
never-failing visitant of Trinidad, where it arrives early in August, and, like nearly 
all the other migratory Waders, leaves in October. It keeps apart from other 
species, or only associates with the Totanus flavipes, which it is said to resemble in 
its habits and movements. It is also given, in the list published by Mr. Lawrence, 
as one of the birds observed by Mr. A. A. Julien, on the Island of Sombrero, West 
Indies. 
According to Giraud, this species, known on Long Island as the Long-legged Sand- 
piper, is not common there. In all his excursions he only obtained two individuals, 
both of which proved to be males. These were shot in a large meadow lying on the 
South Bay, and known as Cedar Island. The first he procured in the latter part of 
August, 1840 ; the other in the early part of September in the following year. In 
both instances the birds were in company with a single Pectoral Sandpiper. The 
first he shot before it alighted, and had no opportunity to observe its habits. The 
second alighted among his decoys while he was lying at a salt-pond in the meadow. 
It walked about with an erect and graceful gait, occasionally stooping to probe the 
soft mud for worms and minute shellfish, particles of which, on dissection, he found 
in its stomach. After spending a few minutes within reach of his gun, it became sud- 
denly alarmed, uttered a shrill note, and took wing ; as it passed from him he brought 
it down. An experienced Bay-man, who was on the meadow at the time, informed 
Mr. Giraud that, in the course of many years’ shooting, he had met with only a few 
stragglers, and had always looked upon them as hybrids. Although somewhat 
resembling in plumage the Red-breasted Snipe, the two are so unlike in size, that 
Mr. Giraud regards it as hardly possible that they could ever be mistaken for each 
other. As he several times found these birds in the New York market — from six to 
eight on a string — it is very evident that wandering flocks occasionally visit the 
shores of Long Island. 
Mr. Dresser states that shortly after his arrival at Matamoras, while out shooting 
at the lagoon, he procured a specimen of this Sandpiper, which was then quite new 
to him. During his stay at Matamoras he shot several more Stilt Sandpipers, meeting 
with them far oftener as the different kinds of birds of this family began to arrive 
from the north, and generally finding them in company with the Macrorhamphus 
griseus. When out hunting Snipe, on the 20th of November, 1863, near San Antonio, 
he shot another of these birds. 
Mr. Audubon states that on the 4th of April, 1847, on the Island of Barataria, forty 
miles from the southwest pass of the Mississippi, he saw a flock of about thirty 
Long-legged Sandpipers alight, within ten steps of him, near the water. They soon 
scattered, following the margin of the advancing and retiring waves in search of food, 
which they procured by probing the wet sand in the manner of the Curlews. They 
inserted the full length of their bills in the sand, holding it there for some little time, 
as if engaged in sucking up what they had found. In this way they continued feed- 
