Actitis macularius
Order Charadriiformes
Family Scolopacidae
Subfamily Tringinae
Adult.— Upper parts light brown; under parts white; everywhere marked with roundish spots of blackish; a row of white spots on the wings show in flight as a white stripe; the outer tail-feathers barred with white.
Immature.— The under parts white, unspotted, washed on the breast with grayish.
Nest, on the ground, of dried grasses and straw, in a field or pasture, often at some distance from water.
Eggs, buffy, thickly speckled with dark brown and black.
The Spotted Sandpiper is a common summer resident of New England and New York, along the coast and also along the margins of inland ponds and streams, arriving late in April and staying till late in October. It is the only bird with the long bill and legs of a sandpiper regularly found on inland waters in June and early July, and, except the Solitary Sandpiper, is at any season the only sandpiper commonly seen on the margins of small inland ponds and rivers. On the ground, its tail and the hinder part of its body are repeatedly tipped upward ; when it flies, its long narrow wings after a few strokes are held so as to form a crescent, which swings first to one side and then to the other close over the water.
As it flies it utters a loud peep, peep, peep, or peet-weet, a sound often heard in the gathering dusk from lake or sea. At close range the spots on the under parts of the adult can be readily made out, but at a distance they hardly show, and in the young bird they are absent. The white along the wing, however, is conspicuous in flight, and helps to distinguish the Spotted from the Solitary Sandpiper. The difference in the tail-feathers is described under the Solitary Sandpiper.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)