BAY SHOOTING. 
1 13 
BAY SHOOTING. 
Y this term I intend to designate the 
shooting of all those species which have 
been enumerated and described in the 
first pages of this volume as Bay Snipe, 
although, as 1 have before observed, with 
the exception of the Red-breasted Snipe 
—Scolopax Noveboracensis —known gene¬ 
rally as the Quail Snipe, or Dowitcher, 
and the Semipalmated Snipe, or Willet, there is not one among 
them which has even a pretension to be called Snipe. 
All the different tribes which pass under this wholly inappro¬ 
priate and unscientific name, are, as we have seen, permanent 
dwellers during the whole year, with the exception of a brief 
period during the breeding season, of some or other portion of 
the United States. Wintering southward, they pass north and 
eastward during the spring, and almost before the summer is 
spent, are on the coasts of Massachusetts, New-York, and New- 
Jersey, with their young broods. 
Like all those birds which visit these States, on their way to 
breed in the spring, and return in the autumn, these are far 
tamer and more settled, and make a much longer sojourn on 
our coasts at the latter than at the. former period; and from 
Boston Bay to Egg Harbor, the shores swarm wherever there 
are appropriate feeding places, with these countless aquatic 
myriads. 
VOL. II. Q 
