THE SPOTTED SANDPIPER 
By HERBERT K. JOB 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 51 
The sight of a shore-bird has always given me a peculiar thrill. In 
my boyhood I associated their bands with outings in summer or autumn 
on the seacoast, when I tramped for miles over stretches of firmly-packed 
sand by the booming surf on “the backside of the Cape” (Cape Cod), 
or explored great salt marshes, luxuriating in briny odors and listening 
eagerly for the pipings of an approaching fiock. An added charm of 
mystery and travel lingered about these waifs, which were more at home 
on the shores of the Arctic Sea than on beaches made commonplace by 
hotels and merrymakers. They seemed to carry, like the lass of the 
proverb, a “delicate air,” so clean, so trim, so grace- ^ Blessed 
ful were they. Thus the Spotted Sandpiper, as one Shore-bird 
of these shore-birds, always brings to my imagination 
a sweet little whiff of the sea-breeze ; even in a potato-field it is a blessed 
shore-bird still, and calls up impressions of the whole fascinating tribe. 
In many parts of the country the race of shore-birds would now be 
unknown — have vanished like lost arts and extinct races — were* it not 
for our dear little “Teeter,” the Spotted Sandpiper, which is by far the 
commonest and most widely distributed shore-bird in North America 
to-day. In answer to the inquiry as to where it is found, I would ask the 
opposite question: Where is it not found? This is not to assert that 
it is swarming in every locality. Far from it, alas ! But there is hardly 
a place on the continent, except in deep forest, where one need be sur- 
prised to run across it. 
Like most other shore-birds, the Spotted Sandpiper is a great 
traveler. One would hardly suspect the little pair, settled down for the 
summer so tamely in a quiet farm-pasture, of being restless, and of 
craving: the excitement of 
foreign 
travel ; yet, for aught we can tell. 
these may be the selfsame birds that a certain explorer met last winter 
away down in Peru, or Bolivia, or southern Brazil. 
They are erratic in their movements and desires. 
Though many of them remain in the Northern States 
well into October, other individuals show themselves 
July in the West Indies, Venezuela, or in Mexico, 
tourists appear in northern Florida near the end of 
takes them more than a month to travel to the vicinity of New York, 
for there are no dining-cars on the routes they patronize, and they 
work their passage in thorough and leisurely fashion. 
201 
Erratic 
Migrants 
by the end of 
The returning 
March ; but it 
