Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for BeginnersWright, Mabel Osgood
General
Citizen Bird: Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners
Wright, Mabel Osgood
Birds -- Juvenile literature
Under parts white, but mottled with dusky on the breast, where it also
tinged with buff, and barred very distinctly on each side further back;
under tail-coverts barred with buff and black.
Eyes brown; feet and bill greenish-gray, the latter very soft and
sensitive, the former with a very small hind toe.
A Citizen of temperate North America, found at different seasons in
marshy and boggy places throughout the United States.
A member of the guild of Ground Gleaners, and, like the Woodcock and
Golden Plover, a fine game bird, which it is right to shoot for food at
the proper season.
The Spotted Sandpiper
Length seven and a half inches.
Upper parts a pretty Quaker color, like the Cuckoo's, but with many fine
curved black lines; tail regularly barred with black and white.
Under parts pure white, with many round black spots all over them; but
young birds do not have any spots.
Bill and feet flesh-colored, the former with a black tip, the latter
with a very small hind toe, and a little web at the roots of the front
toes.
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
Length nine and half inches, of which the long, slender, curved bill
makes an inch and a half.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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