"So missy is flattering her old bird man! Well, tell me the names, for I suppose you can remember them."
"Oh yes—but come to think of it, I don't think Olaf said what the Wise Men call these birds. One was a bob-tailed Rail—one was a Snipe with far-back eyes and a finger-beak like a Woodcock's—one was a Spotted Sandpiper that teeters and whistles 'tweet-weet'—and the other was a tiny little Sandpiper with a very sad cry. Now do you know them?"
"Famous!" laughed the Doctor; "of course I know them after that."
"Do they all belong to the same family?" persisted Dodo, whose little head was beginning to swim with all this new knowledge it had to hold.
"Not all of them. The Snipe and both the Sandpipers belong to one family, the same as that of the Woodcock; but the Rail belongs to a different family. So also does the Plover you learned this morning. The three families of Snipes, Plovers, and Rails are the largest ones of all the tribe of Birds that Paddle and Wade by the sea-shore. The Rails from their size and shape are sometimes called Marsh Hens. The Turnstone belongs to a fourth family, but it is a very small one. Now I will give you the tables of the four kinds of birds you have learned this afternoon."
Wilson's Snipe
Length about eleven inches, of which the very long and straight bill makes more than two inches.