A Summer Citizen of most parts of the United States and Canada, also found in winter in some of the Southern States and far beyond.
A member of the guild of Ground Gleaners, and a very gentle, confiding little bird who likes to be neighborly, and should never be shot, but encouraged to nest in our fields.
The Least Sandpiper
Length only five and a half to six inches—the very least in size of all the Snipe family. Upper parts black or blackish, in summer with rusty-red edgings and white tips of many feathers, in winter these edgings gray, a light line over the eye and a dark line from the bill to the eye.
Under parts white, tinged in summer with buff on the breast and at all seasons mottled there with dusky.
Middle tail feathers blackish, the other ones plain gray with white edgings, but without any black cross-bars. Bill black; feet greenish-gray, with a small hind toe like other Sandpipers', but no sign of any web at the roots of the front toes.
A Citizen of North America, nesting far north, beyond the United States, and travelling in large flocks in the fall to the West Indies and South America.
A member of the guild of Ground Gleaners. It belongs to a family of game birds, but it is a shame to shoot such a mite of a bird for the morsel of meat its tiny body affords—hardly one mouthful.
There is a brother of the Least Sandpiper, hardly any bigger, and so much like it that you can hardly tell them apart, unless you notice that this one has two little webs between the roots of the front toes. This is the Semipalmated Sandpiper, for semipalmated means "half-webbed," as its toes are. Both kinds are called "Peeps" by people who do not know the difference between them.
The Virginia Rail