Page:Cassell's book of birds (IA cassellsbookofbi04breh).pdf/44

 distance, pausing from time to time, for a few moments, in the course of their swift career; their flight is easy, and accompanied by a variety of graceful evolutions. Their cry, which is shrill and penetrating, is uttered with such various degrees of rapidity, as to produce very different effects. In disposition they are cautious and usually shy. Audubon states that he had ocular demonstration of the fact, that, as its name imports, this species actually turns over stones and other objects to search for food, and gives the following interesting account of the proceedings of four of these birds, which he observed on the beach of Gaveston Island, whilst he was engaged together with a sailor in carrying the carcase of a deer to be washed:—"They merely," he says, "ran a little distance out of our course, and on our returning came back immediately to the same place; this they did four different times, and after we were done remained busily engaged in searching for food. None of them were more than fifteen or twenty yards distant, and I was delighted to see the ingenuity with which they turned over the oyster-shells, clods of mud, and other small bodies left exposed by the retiring tide. Whenever the object was not too large, the bird bent its legs to half their length, placed its bill beneath it, and with a sudden, quick jerk of the head pushed it off, when it quickly picked up the food which was thus exposed to view, and walked deliberately to the next shell to perform the same operation. In some instances when the clusters of oyster-shells or clods of mud were too heavy to be removed in the ordinary manner, they would not only use the bill and head, but also the breast, pushing the object with all their strength, and reminding me of the labour which I have undergone in turning over a large turtle. Among the sea-weeds which had been cast on the shore they used only the bill, tossing the garbage from side to side with a dexterity extremely pleasant to behold. In this manner I saw these four Turnstones examine almost every portion of the shore, along a space of from thirty to forty yards; after which I drove them away, that our hunters might not kill them on their return."

Upon the coast of Cape May and Egg Harbour this species is known by the name of the "Horsefoot Snipe," from the fact that it subsists during a portion of the summer almost entirely on the spawn and eggs of the great "king crab," called by the common people the "horsefoot." This spawn may often be seen by bushels in the hollows and eddies on the coast.

During the breeding season these birds retire to high northern latitudes, so that their mode of nidification was long a mystery, until Mr. Hewitson, who made diligent search for the Turnstone's nest on the coast of Norway, was at last successful. "We had," he writes, "visited numerous islands with little encouragement, and were about to land upon a flat rock, bare, except where here and there grew tufts of grass or stunted juniper clinging to its surface, when our attention was attracted by the singular cry of a Turnstone, which in its eager watch had seen our approach and perched itself upon an eminence of the rock, assuring us by its querulous oft-repeated note and anxious motions that its nest was there. We remained in the boat a short time, until we had watched it behind a tuft of grass, near which, after a minute search, we succeeded in finding the nest, in a situation in which I should never have suspected to meet with a bird of this sort breeding; it was placed against the ledge of the rock, and consisted of nothing more than the drooping leaves of the juniper-bush, under a creeping branch of which, the eggs, four in number, were snugly concealed and admirably sheltered from the many storms by which these bleak and exposed rocks are visited, allowing just sufficient room for the bird to cover them. We afterwards found more nests with little difficulty. All the nests contained four eggs each. The time of breeding is about the middle of June. The eggs measure one inch and two lines in breadth, and are of an olive-green colour, spotted and streaked with ash-blue and two shades of reddish brown."

The parents are much attached to their offspring. The habits of the latter resemble those of young Plovers. Audubon mentions an instance in which one of these birds was reared by a lady, who fed it on boiled rice and bread soaked in milk.