The Spotted Sandpiper 
which is only heightened by the Quaker drab adornment ot the upperparts 
and the apparently serious view of life which the owner takes. Absurd 
as the action is in adults, it tests the risibles still more sorely when a 
toddling youngster, bristling with pin-feathers, discovers the same uncon¬ 
trollable ambition in his rear parts, and says How-do-you-do backward, 
with imperturbable gravity. 
Solitary Sandpiper would be a name most fitting, were it not already 
appropriated by Tringa solitaria; for of all Shore-birds the Peet-weet is 
least sociable inter se. Family parties, to be sure, hold together until 
the young are ready to fly. Indeed, I am not sure but that family ties 
here are the strongest of all—while they last. Your solitary heart loves 
deepest, and yearns for its own with the most abiding tenderness, even 
when its way lies apart. But a Peet-weet loves solitude, and the only 
grown person he will allow around is his mate, and here only so long as 
family responsibilities require. Each pair occupies a circumscribed stretch 
of territory, and will suffer invasion up to a certain boundary mark; but 
just as surely, each pair is happiest when it has a little lakelet or a moun¬ 
tain meadow all to itself. And, lastly, the name “Spotted” is a misnomer, 
applicable only for a certain portion of the year,—April to September, 
namely. In the winter season his breast is as guiltless of spots as Sir 
Gallahad’s scutcheon. At this season also, when he frequents, or rather 
/^frequents, our southern coast, love of solitude has become for him a 
madness. Although the bird is scarcely molested under pretense of its 
being game, we would think from the way it dodges a gun—even one held 
in the hand of an honest scientist—that the Spotted Sandpiper regarded 
himself as a very Curlew Sandpiper for rarity, or else that he was a train 
robber with a price upon his head. I have played peekaboo with these 
gentry for an entire afternoon, and then secured a specimen only under 
cover of darkness. These astute pipers frequent the wildest rocky points 
of our southern coasts and islands, and they brave the buffet of the surf 
as surely as Aphriza or Heteroscelus (who knows, by the way, but that 
these vaunted heroes of the surf are nothing better than brookside loafers 
at home?) When surprised—and he always gets up first —Actitis hustles 
out over the water as though he were heading for Patagonia. If you keep 
on your way, the chances are that the bird will describe a huge semilune, 
then hit a spot downshore on your own back track. Or, if you stand your 
ground, the brave piper is quite capable of sustained and leisurely flight 
over the water, where he skims close to the surface and follows the swell 
and fall of every wave, in the effort to tire you out, so that he may return 
to the identical spot he left. 
1281 
