80 
TOTANUS SEMIPALMATUS. 
GENUS LI. — TOTANUS, Bechstein. 
226 . TOTANUS SEMIPALMATUS , TEMMINCK. 
SCOLOPAX SEMIPALMATA, WILSON. SEMIPALMATED SNIPE. 
WILSON, PLATE LVI. FIG. III. 
This is one of the most noisy and noted birds that 
inhabit our salt marshes in summer. Its common name 
is the willet, by which appellation it is universally 
known along* the shores of New York, New Jersey, 
Delaware, and Maryland, — in all of which places it 
breeds in great numbers. 
The willet is peculiar to America. It arrives from 
the south on the shores of the Middle States about 
the 20th of April, or beginning of May ; and from that 
time to the last of July, its loud and shrill reiterations 
of pill-will-willet, p ill-will-wille t, resound, almost in- 
cessantly, along the marshes, and may be distinctly 
heard at the distance of more than half a mile. About 
the 20th of May, the willets generally begin to lay. * 
Their nests are built on the ground, among the grass 
of the salt marshes, pretty well towards the land, or 
cultivated fields, and are composed of wet rushes and 
coarse grass, forming a slight hollow or cavity in a 
tussock. This nest is gradually increased during the 
period of laying and sitting, to the height of five or six 
inches. The eggs are usually four in number, very 
thick at the great end, and tapering to a narrower 
point at the other than those of the common hen ; they 
measure two inches and one eighth in length, by one 
and a half in their greatest breadth, and are of a dark 
dingy olive, largely blotched with blackish brown, 
particularly at the great end. In some, the ground 
colour has a tinge of green ; in others, of bluish. They 
are excellent eating, as I have often experienced when 
obliged to dine on them in my hunting excursions 
* From some unknown cause, the height of laying of these birds 
is said to be full two weeks later than it was twenty years ago. 
