The food of the Willet consists of aquatic insects, small crabs, and fiddlers, which they procure either by pursuing them on foot or by probing for them in their burrows, along the mud bars, and in the crevices of the creeks and salt-water ditches. I have also observed it turning over stones and shells to seek for worms beneath them.
The males are smaller than the females. I have presented you with figures of the adult both in the winter and summer plumage.
Scolopax semipalmatus, Lath. Ind. Ornith. vol. ii. p. 722.
Totanus semipalmatus, Ch. Bonaparte, Synops. of Birds of the United States, p. 323.
Semipalmated Snipe, Scolopax semipalmata, Wils. Amer. Ornith. vol. vii. p. 27. pl. 56. fig.3.
Totanus semipalmatus, Semipalmated Tatler, Swains. and Richards. Fauna Bor. Amer. part ii. p. 388.
Semipalmated Snipe or Willet, Nuttall, Manual, vol. ii. p. 144.
Adult Male in spring. Plate CCLXXIV. Fig. 1.
Bill long, slender, compressed, tapering, straight or recurved in an almost imperceptible degree. Upper mandible with the dorsal line straight, the ridge convex, flattened at the base, the sides grooved to the middle, afterwards convex, the edges broad and flattened, the breadth of the mandible a little increased towards the point, which is narrowed, slightly deflected and obtuse. Nostrils subbasal, linear, pervious, nearer the edge than the dorsal line. Lower mandible with the angle very narrow and medial, beyond it the outline slightly ascending and straight, sides grooved as far as the angle, and convex, the edges broad and flat, the point narrow and slightly incurved.
Head small, oblong, narrowed before. Neck rather long, slender. Body slender. Feet long and slender; tibia bare for nearly half its length, scutellate before and behind; tarsus long, slender, covered before and behind with numerous scutella, the narrow lateral spaces with extremely small oblong scales. Toes small, slender, scutellate above, flat beneath, marginate, the anterior toes connected by basal membranes which extend along their sides, the outer membrane larger than the inner; first toe extremely small, second and fourth about equal, third little longer. Claws small, compressed, slightly arched, obtuse, that of third toe with a dilated inner edge.