Do you know the spotted sandpiper, teeter, tilt-up, teeter-tail, teeter-snipe, or tip-up, whichever you may choose to call it?
As if it had not yet decided whether to be a beach bird or a woodland dweller, a wader or a perching songster, it is equally at home along the seashore or on wooded uplands, wherever ditches, pools, streams, creeks, swamps, and wet meadows furnish its favourite foods.
It stays with us through the long summer.
Did you ever see it go through any of the queer motions that have earned for it so many names?
Jerking up first its head, then its tail, it walks with a funny, bobbing, tipping, see-saw gait, as if it were self-conscious and conceited.
Still another popular name was given from its sharp call peet-weet, peet-weet, rapidly repeated, and usually uttered as the bird flies in graceful curves over the water or inland fields.
Text: Birds Every Child Should Know by Neltje Blanchan
Author of “Bird Neighbours,” “Birds that Hunt and Are Hunted,”
“Nature’s Garden,” and “How to Attract the Birds.”
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
1907 by Doubleday, Page & Company
Image Description:
Title Spotted Sandpiper
Alternative Title Actitis macularius
Creator Boyd, Amanda
Description Spotted sandpiper at Nantucket National Wildlife Refuge, MA.
Subject Birds, Coastal environments, Wildlife refuges
Location Massachusetts
FWS Site NANTUCKET NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
Publisher U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Date created 2011-07-27
https://digitalmedia.fws.gov/FullRes/natdiglib/Spotted-Sandpiper.jpg
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