. A history of the game birds, wild-fowl and shore birds of Massachusetts and adjacent states : including those used for food which have disappeared since the settlement of the country, and those which are now hunted for food or sport, with observations on their former abundance and recent decrease in numbers; also the means for conserving those still in existence . ird, leaning forward, plunges in its bill and head, sometimesto the eyes, and catches the alarmed water insects as theydart away. I have watched this carefully with a glass whilelying in the grass only ten or twelve feet from the b
. A history of the game birds, wild-fowl and shore birds of Massachusetts and adjacent states : including those used for food which have disappeared since the settlement of the country, and those which are now hunted for food or sport, with observations on their former abundance and recent decrease in numbers; also the means for conserving those still in existence . ird, leaning forward, plunges in its bill and head, sometimesto the eyes, and catches the alarmed water insects as theydart away. I have watched this carefully with a glass whilelying in the grass only ten or twelve feet from the bird. It iseasy by stirring the bottom slightly with a stick to cause asimilar movement of the water insects, but I never couldagitate it so delicately as to avoid clouding the water withsediment from the bottom. Audubon states that he has found stomachs of this speciesfilled with aquatic insects, caterpillars of various kinds andblack spiders. Professor Aughey examined the stomachs oftwo birds; one contained nine locusts and thirty-four otherinsects, the other a grasshopper and forty-three other Warren examined eleven stomachs and found in ten ofthem worms, beetles or other insects and one containedsmall shells. BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 309 WILLET (Catoptrophorus semipalmatus semipalmatus).Common or local names: Humility; Pied-wing Length. — 15 to 16 inches; bill 2 to ; feet partly webbed. Adult in Summer. — Above brownish gray or ashy, speckled and barredmore or less with blackish; below white, sometimes with a brownishtinge; fore neck and upper breast streaked with dusky, flanks barred;wing blackish below, browner above, showing, when spread, largeconspicuous white markings; basal part of the tail and its uppercoverts white, rest light ashy to whitish, sometimes barred withblackish. Adult in Fall and Winter. — Above ash gray; below white; wing as in sum-mer; axillars black at all seasons. Young. — Brownish gray above, tinged with buff;
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1912
