The Spotted Sandpiper 
business there besides looking in the mirror, we could not suppose that he 
is altogether insensible to the flattery of the smooth-flowing stream. It is 
for this reason, perhaps, that he prefers the vicinity of quiet inland or 
upland waters; and it is this also—what else?—that tempts him to make 
from time to time little horizontal 
excursions, or loops, of flight out over 
the river or placid lake. If fright¬ 
ened, as by a boatman, the bird may 
patter along the muddy brim, or 
remove by short flights, but sooner 
or later he puts off from shore, edges 
out over the water, wheels about in 
a great circle, and draws near his 
starting point again, in a graceful 
curve which regards the shore as a 
sort of asymtote—this on wings held 
stiffly, or quivering with emotion. 
Peet-weet would be a second 
choice for a name, even though these 
petty syllables quite fail to express 
the emotional, vibrant qualities of 
the bird’s cries, or the ringing clear¬ 
ness with which they resound from 
shore to shore. Peeet weet, weet, weet, 
weet! What “naturalized” Califor¬ 
nian has not heard that endearing 
sound coming most unexpectedly 
Taken in Modoc County Photo by the Author r ... ... 
baby all alone trom a river-bar in some wild canyon 
of the Sierras, or from the edge of 
some emerald lake nestling in the embrace of snow-banks? What! our 
little Peet-weet up here? How different these from the sluggish waters of 
the Piscataqua, or the prosaic shores of Bullhead Lake. Yet the voice is 
the same,—amiable, alert, sweetly piercing, authentic. It is the same 
bird, too, a fellow Easterner quite at home in this giddy, awful West. 
“Tip-up,” or Teeter-tail, comes next, and the California bird is as little 
restrained in his actions by the presence of frowning Sierras as he was by 
the laughing birches of Vermont. Here, too, he has the never-ending 
habit of teetering: “The fore part of the body is lowered a little, the head 
drawn in, the legs slightly bent, while the hinder parts and tail are alter¬ 
nately hoisted with a peculiar jerk, and drawn down again with the regu¬ 
larity of clock work.” "Phis strange motion, which has won for the bird 
its most familiar trivial name, gives it also an air of mock solemnity, 
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