TELL-TALE GODWIT, OR SNIPE. 
347 
when fat, is in considerable repute. Its chief residence is in 
the vicinity of the sea, where there are extensive mud flats. 
It has a sharp whistle, of three or four notes, when about to 
take wing, and when flying. These birds may be shot down 
with great facility, if the sportsman, after the first discharge, 
will only lie close, and permit the wounded birds to flutter 
about without picking them up ; the flock will generally make 
a circuit, and alight repeatedly, until the greater part of them 
may be shot down. 
Length of the Yellow-shanks, ten inches ; extent, twenty ; 
bill, slender, straight, an inch and a half in length, and black ; 
line over the eye, chin, belly, and vent, white; breast and 
throat, gray; general colour of the plumage above, dusky 
brown olive, inclining to ash, thickly marked with small 
triangular spots of dull white ; tail-coverts, white ; tail, also 
white, handsomely barred with dark olive ; wings, plain dusky, 
the secondaries edged, and all the coverts edged and tipt with 
white ; shafts, black ; eye, also black ; legs and naked thighs, 
long and yellow ; outer toe, united to the middle one by a 
slight membrane ; claws, a horn colour. The female can 
scarcely be distinguished from the male. 
TELL-TALE GODWIT, OR SNIPE. — SCOLOPAX 
VOCIFERUS. — Plate LVIII. Fig. 5. 
Stone Snipe, Arct. Zool. p. 468, No. 376. — Turt. Syst. p. 396. — Peale's Museum, 
No. 3940. 
TOTANUS MELANOLEUCUS. — Vieillot.* 
T. melanoleucus, OrcTs reprint of Wils. p. 61. — JBonap. Synop. p. 324. 
This species and the preceding are both well known to our 
Duck gunners along the sea coast and marshes, by whom they 
are detested, and stigmatized with the names of the Greater 
and Lesser Tell-tale, for their faithful vigilance in alarming 
* Bonaparte, in his Nomenclature, remarks, “ This bird is undoubtedly 
the S. melanoleuca of Gmelin and Latham, first made known by Pennant, 
