98 SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. ing a nail held crosswise in the hand, though it is louder and more full. This performance is generally restricted to late evening and early morning during the spring, but is occasionally practiced in the fall. Most of our transient visitant Snipe are true shore birds. Many of them are classed as game birds, and have _ . , ^ , now become so uncommon that, as Senupalmated , , ' , Sandpiper, before remarked, it requires a special Ereunetes pmiihiji. knowledge of their ways in order to Plate X. gj^j them. But there are some sj)ecies too small to be worthy the sportsman's attention, and they are often numerous on our beaches. They are genei'ally known as Peej)s or Ox-eyes, but in books are termed Semipalniated Sandpipers — active little fellows, with black, gray and rusty backs and white under parts, wdio run along the shore, feeding on the small forms of life cast up by the waves. They are sociable birds, and even when feeding the members of a flock keep together, while when flying they move almost as one bird. These Sandpipers visit us in May, when journeying to their summer homes within the Arctic Circle, and return in July, to linger on our shores until October. Their call -note is a cheery, peeping twitter, which probably suggested one of their common names. Plovers. (Family Charadriid^.) Most Plovers differ from Snipe in possessing three instead of four toes, and in having the scales on the tarsi rounded, not square or transverse. Their bill is shorter and stouter than that of Snipe, and they do not probe for food, but pick it up from the surface. Although several species visit dry fields and uplands, they are ranked as shore birds or bay birds, and, as with Snipe, the species large enough to be ranked as game
