they occur in flocks of from 2 to 100. They reach their greatest abundance early in October. On October 7 and 11, 1924, I observed over 1,000, and on other days shortly before and after these dates from 500 to 800. Usually there are not over 100 present at once. They feed in the shallow open water, on the mud flats, and among the flooded grasses and sedges. They often associate with other sandpipers, especially the greater yellow-legs, stilt, and semipalmated sandpipers. They are surprisingly tame while in Porto Rico, and it is slaughter, not sport, to shoot them. Sometimes the flocks are so densely packed that hunters kill as many as 20 at a single shot.
I have never felt that the summer yellow-legs should be in the game-bird class, though I must confess that it has some gamey qualities. It is, at times, absurdly tame; it decoys very easily, returns again and again to the slaughter, and its little body is so small that many lives must be sacrificed to make a decent bag. However, it is interesting sport to sit in a well-made blind on a marsh, with decoys skillfully arranged, and show one's skill in whistling up these lively and responsive little birds. After all, gunning is not so much a means of filling up the larder as an excuse for getting out to enjoy the beauties of nature and the ways of its wild creatures.
Mr. Nichols explains how it is done on Long Island, where this species has for many years furnished most of the shooting; he writes:
To the Long Island gunner the yellow-legs and its associates are known as "bay snipe." Various customs relating to their pursuit for sport (sniping) have arisen in the course of the generations that it has been in vogue. Imitation wooden birds ("stool") are set out as decoys in the marshes over which the birds may be expected to pass, and the gunner stations himself within range behind a blind usually constructed of bushes. There is opportunity for considerable skill in setting out the decoys, placing and constructing the blind, imitating the cries of the various species to draw them within range. Where possible the decoys are placed so as to be seen from every direction against a surface of water; if in a small pool scattered about, if in a larger water area, directly off some projecting point so as not to be blanketed by the land. The larger the show of decoys, the larger the flocks of birds that will be tempted to respond to them, and one attempts to scatter them so that each will stand apart, no three which are close together will be in line. They all face more or less directly into the wind as would alighted birds. Ideally the blind is placed to windward of the rig of decoys. Approaching birds maneuver toward it from down wind, and are so less likely to notice the gunner and take alarm before coming within range.
Winter.—Although a few lesser yellow-legs may spend the winter occasionally as far north as Louisiana and Florida, the main winter home is in southern South America and very few are to be found regularly north of that continent. A. H. Holland (1892) records it as fairly common throughout the year in Argentina but more numerous from October to February. Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1926), referring to the same general region, writes:
The lesser yellow-legs was widespread in distribution after October and was more abundant on the whole than Totanus melanoleucus. The birds frequented the shores of open lagoons, shallow pools, or coastal mud flats, and though found distributed singly or two or three together it was not unusual to encounter them in larger bands that might contain 100 individuals. On their wintering grounds they were rather silent, but with the opening of northward migration resumed their habit of uttering musical though noisy calls when disturbed in any manner. On the pampas they congregated during drier seasons about lagoons and flocks often sought refuge from the violent winds that swept the open plains behind scant screens of rushes. After any general rain these flocks dispersed to pools of rain water in the pastures, where insect food was easily available. The winter population was thus not stationary, but shifted constantly with changes in the weather. By the first of March the lesser yellow-legs had begun their northward movement and numbers were found near Guamini, where they paused to rest after a northward flight from Patagonia. In their case, as in that of other migrant species from North America, it was instructive to note that the migration southward came in September and October when the birds traveled southward with the unfolding of the southern spring and that the return northward was initiated by the approach of rigorous weather in faraway Patagonia. Migrant flocks, many of whose members offered sad evidence of inhospitable treatment at the hands of Argentine gunners in the shape of broken or missing legs, were noted on the plains of Mendoza, near the base of the Andes, in March. And during early April the migration became a veritable rush so that on the night of April 5, at Tucuman, the air was filled with the cries of these and other waders in steady flight northward above the city.
DISTRIBUTION
Range.—North and South America.