DOWITCHER. 
171 
their fare with vegetable diet, such as the roots of the Zostera 
marina / and 1 have also found in their stomachs the whitish 
oval seeds of some marsh or aquatic plant. They likewise, in 
common with the Sandpipers and many other wading birds, 
swallow gravel to assist the trituration of their food. 
We know to-day something more than Nuttall could tell us of the 
nesting habits of the Dowitcher, or “Deutscher’s Snipe,” as the 
bird was originally called, to distinguish it from the “ English 
Snipe,” now known as Wilson’s. Our bird is still called “ German 
Snipe ” at some localities on the coast. 
A number of nests have been taken in the Far North, where the 
birds find suitable feeding-grounds in the bogs and marshes amid 
the barren lands bordering the Arctic Ocean. Stragglers from the 
main flocks are met with in summer throughout the fur countries 
and down to the forty-fourth parallel; but it does not follow that 
they breed so far to the southward. Large flocks appear on the 
Atlantic coast during both the spring and autumn migrations, 
though they seem to pass over New Brunswick and Nova Scotia 
without alighting, in the spring. But they move northward rapidly 
and with few stoppages, while they return quite leisurely and are 
therefore considered more abundant in the autumn in all localities. 
In the vicinity of the Great Lakes the birds are rarely seen, though 
it is known that large flocks journey north and south across the 
Great Plains. In winter the birds are found in South America. 
Note. — The Loxg-billed Dowitcher {M . scolopaceus) has 
lately been separated from griseUs. It is a larger bird, with a 
longer bill; and though chiefly confined to the Western Province, 
examples are seen regularly on the Atlantic coast. 
