During the northward flight in May, there is often good sport, but the time is more uncertain than in August; nor do the birds, which are old and wary, stool quite so well as on their return. In the spring they pursue the same course as in the autumnal flight; which, although it is the most direct line, and follows the principal expanse of salt meadow, necessitates considerable journeys far out at sea. But it is doubtless the fact that these birds, in consequence of their stretch and power of wing, could sustain an unbroken flight from north to south, and accomplish the distance in a wonderfully short space of time. Unabated speed of one hundred miles an hour is equivalent to twenty-four hundred miles in a day, and portions of the flock may not pause between Labrador and the swamps of Florida. When the wind is strong and continuous from the westward, it is supposed that they pass far out to sea; and during these seasons there will be no flight of birds either at Long Island or on the Jersey coast. At such periods sportsmen often conclude that the entire race has been destroyed, till the easterly winds and soaking rains of the following year, bring them back more numerous than ever. As they must migrate, and are not to be found anywhere on the land, it is clear that they must have the power of completing their journey in one unbroken flight. The principal varieties are the sickle-bill, jack-curlew, the marlin and ring-tailed marlin, the willet, the black-breast or bull-head, and golden plovers, the yelper, yellow-legs, robin-snipe, dowitchers, brant-bird, and krieker. The upland or grass-plover is pursued in a different manner, and the smaller birds are not pursued for sport at all. The sickle-bills, so named after the beautiful sweeping curve of the bill, which has been known to measure eleven inches in length, are the largest of them all. They are colored much like a marlin, have a beautiful bright eye, a short reed-like call, and a steady, dignified flight. In stretch of wings they exceed three feet, and nothing can be more impressive than the approach of a large flock of these birds with wings and bills extended and legs dropped in preparation for alighting amid the stools. They are often shy in the first instance, but as soon as one of their number is killed, they return again and again to the fatal spot--apparently in blind confidence that he must have alighted instead of fallen, or out of brotherly anxiety for his fate. I have on several occasions attracted a large flock that was hesitating whether to approach or not, and almost resolving to depart, by killing one of their number that incautiously ventured within long range--for immediately on seeing him fall, they approached, in spite of the report, with full confidence.