0PLAND SHOOTING. 
205 
"Where vast unenclosed plains are not to be found, this bird 
loves to haunt large hill pastures, fallow-fields, and newly 
ploughed grounds, where it finds the various kinds of insect food 
to which it is so partial,—grasshoppers, beetles, and all the 
small coleopterous flies common to such localities, in the grass 
lands—and worms, small snails, and the like, on the fallows. 
The Upland Plover is a shy and timid bird ; and, on foot, it 
is, for the most part, nearly impossible to approach it. It feeds' 
on ground such as I have described, in small companies—they 
cannot be called flocks , for they do not usually act in concert, 
or fly together, rising, if they are startled, one by one, and each 
taking its own course, without heeding its companions—this, by 
the way, I have noticed as a peculiarity of all the upland scolo- 
pacidcB , none of which fly, so far as I have ever observed, in 
large bodies, wheeling and turning simultaneously, at a signal, 
as is the practice, more or less, of all the maritime Sandpipers, 
Tattlers, Plovers, and Phalaropes. While running swiftly over 
the surface of the ground, they utter a very peculiar and plain¬ 
tive whistle, exceedingly mellow and musical, which has the 
remarkable quality of appearing to be sounded close at hand, 
when it is in reality uttered at a very considerable distance. It 
is this note which frequently gives the first notice to the sports¬ 
man, that he is in the vicinity of the bird; and it also gives him 
notice that the bird is aware of him, and out of his reach; for 
no sooner is it uttered, than the Sandpiper either takes wing at 
once, or runs very rapidly to some distance, and then rising, 
sweeps round and round in aerial circles, and alights again out 
of distance. If wing-tipped, or slightly wounded, it runs so ra¬ 
pidly as to set pursuit at defiance, and then squats behind some 
clod of earth, or tuft of grass, to the colors of which its beauti¬ 
fully mottled plumage so nearly assimilates it, that it cannot be 
distinguished, without great difficulty, among the leaves and 
herbage. 
I have only shot this Sandpiper myself, on a tract of upland 
pasture and ploughed land near to Bristol, in Pennsylvania, 
known as “ Livingston Manor/’ where I found the birds very 
