LEAST SANDPIPER. 
139 
Strength and energy necessary for the period of reproduction. 
It is indeed certain that those stragglers which, from age or 
disability, remain, as it were hermits, secluded from the rest of 
the wandering host, do neither propagate nor fatten while thus 
detained through summer in the warmer climates. Of this fact 
we have already mentioned instances, in the case of straggling 
Curlews killed in this vicinity by the i8th of July, — a period 
when the main mass of the species are engaged in feeding or 
just hatching their tender young. 
This little Sandpiper, which we have named in honor of Wil- 
son (certainly not being the species first intended as Tringa 
pusilla), leaves us by the close of September, and departs from 
the Middle States towards its remote hibernal retreats in the 
course of the month of October. The present species and 
some others appear occasionally to feed partially on vegetable 
substances as well as on animals, as I have found in their 
stomachs pieces apparently of zostera roots and flowers of the 
marsh plantain. 
The Peeps still throng our shores each spring and autumn, and 
are the same active and confiding creatures that Nuttall found 
them. Their general breeding-area is from Labrador to the Arctic 
Ocean, but a few nests have been discovered south of the St. 
Lawrence ; for the nesting habits of these birds are no longer 
unknown. 
