spotted Sandpiper 
251 
The least sandpipers, peeps, ox-eyes or stints, 
as they are variously called, are only about the 
size of sparrows — ^too small for any self- 
respecting gunner to bag, therefore they are 
still abundant. Their light, dingy-brown and 
gray, finely speckled backs are about the colour 
of the mottled sand they run over so nimbly, 
and their breasts are as white as the froth of 
the waves that almost never touch them. 
Beach birds become marvellously quick in 
reckoning the fraction of a second when they 
must run from under the combing wave about 
to break over their little heads. Plovers rely 
on their fleet feet to escape a wetting. Least 
sandpipers usually fly upward and onward if a 
deluge threatens; but they have a cousin, the 
semipalmated (half-webbed) sandpiper that 
swims well when the unexpected water sud- 
denly lifts it ofl its feet. 
These busy, cheerful, sprightly little peepers 
are always ready to welcome to their flocks 
other birds — ring-necked plovers, turns tones, 
snipe and phalaropes. If by no other sign, 
you may distinguish sandpipers by their con- 
stant call, peep-peep. 
SPOTTED SANDPIPER 
Do you know the spotted sandpiper, teeter, 
.tilt-up, teeter-tail, teeter-snipe, or tip-up, which- 
