BOARD OF GAME AND FISH COMMISSIONERS 
77 
The BLACK-NECKED STILT was reported by Dr. Hatch to have been once 
common in Minnesota both as a migrant and summer resident, but in view of the 
known range of this species, it is probable that the seemingly circumstantial 
account is in some way due to an error, possibly confused memory, as the Doctor 
kept few, if any, written records. There is no trustworthy evidence that the bird 
ever occurred here at all and if it did it was probably only as a straggler from 
the south. 
SANDPIPERS, SNIPES, GODWITS, ETC. (Scolopacidae ). 
There are twenty-four species of this family to be considered in this connec¬ 
tion. Of these, six breed in the state, thirteen are migrants, spring and fall, two 
are accidental, the status of one is unsettled and two are no longer found here. 
The typical Waders belong to this family. Several members are famous game 
birds. All are valuable economically as large destroyers of injurious insects. 
WOODCOCK. Occurs sparingly as a summer resident all over the state, but 
is most frequent in the southeastern portion. It is a very early arrival in the 
spring, coming usually early in April, and soon thereafter begins nesting in bush- 
grown and wooded lowland places. It has undoubtedly decreased much in numbers, 
but never was sufficiently abundant in Minnesota to make it an important object 
of chase. However, if the graphically told tales of Mr. 1'. S. Van Dyke in 
Forest and Stream, Vol. X, 1878, pages 430-431 and 447-448, and later in Outing, 
Vol. XX, 1892, pages 293-297, are to be taken at their face value, there must have 
been many Woodcock in the wooded bottomlands of the Mississippi River below 
Lake Pepin in the early seventies. Mr. Van Dyke tells of wonderful shooting trips 
there about 1872 and states that twenty birds to each gun satisfied the members 
of the party on several occasions. The Outing article begins with the following 
astonishing sentence: “In few places has there ever been Woodcock shooting that, 
for the certainty of finding the birds and ease in following them, equalled the 
sport in the bottomlands of the upper Mississippi River twenty years ago.” No 
one else seems to have encountered such conditions in Minnesota. 
WILSON’S SNIPE, JACK SNIPE. This well-known and commonly hunted 
bird is too familiar to sportsmen to need much description. It is still fairly 
abundant here, especially during migrations. About mid-April the flight arrives 
from the south and then for a few days it can be found in numbers along streams, 
lake shores and in almost every marshy spot. Such a flight occurred at Minne¬ 
apolis in the spring of 1918, the height of the wave being on April 16th. It nests 
throughout the state on lowlands. In late summer and fall it frequents singly 
wet meadows and marshes, where it remains until ice forms. A stray individual 
not infrequently remains about some spring run through the entire winter. 
Wilson’s Snipe, like the Woodcock, has a so-called “flight song.” This aerial 
performance is to be heard mornings and evenings, moonlight nights and on still, 
cloudy days, when the birds, rising to a considerable height, circle round and round 
on fluttering wings and darting suddenly downward produce a peculiar hollow 
whirring or “bleating” sound, thought to be caused by the air passing through the 
outer flight feathers. 
LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER; GRAY SNIPE. This bird has not, for some 
years at least, been common in Minnesota, but there is reason to believe that it 
