SCOLOPACID^ — THE SNIPE FAMILY — ACTODROMAS. 



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dusky, with paler edges ; other rectrices light brownish gray, with white shafts. Crown light 

 grayish fulvous or ochraceous, heavily streaked with black ; wing-coverts brownish gray, with 

 darker centres and paler edges, the shafts blackisli ; tertials edged with ochraceous ; primaries 

 dusky. A light superciliary stripe, and a darker one on side of the head ; neck and juguluni very 

 pale grayish fulvous or fulvous-ashy streaki'd with (hisky ; sides and crissum narrowly streaked ; 

 other lower parts immaculate white. Adult in ivinter : Above, rather dark brownish gi-ay, the 

 feathers with indistinctly darker centres ; rump, etc., as in summer plumage. Superciliary stripe 

 and lower parts white, the juguluni light ashy, indistinctly streaked. Youncj, first plumage : Very 

 similar to the summer plumage of the adult, but many of the scapulars and interscapulars tipped 

 with white, these feathers witliout any Ijars ; wing-coverts bordered with ochraceous. Juguluni 

 suffused with pale fulvous, and obsoletely streaked.^ » 



Total length, about 5.50 to 6.50 inches ; extent, 11.00 to 12.50 ; wing, about .3.50 to nearly 

 4.00 ; culmen, about .75 to .92 ; tarsus, .75 ; middle toe, .60. Bill dull black ; iris dark brown; 

 legs and toes dusky. 



This alnmdant and extensively diffused species reseml^les very closely, both in its small size 

 and ill its colors, at all seasons, the equally common and widely distributed Semipalmated Sand- 

 piper, Ereunetes 'pusillus. It may be immediately distinguished, however, liy the completely cleft 

 toes, the other species having all the anterior toes webbed at the base. 



This common and familiar Sandpiper has an almost universal distribution through- 

 out ]Srortli America, and in the winter Avanders in greater or less numbers into Mex- 

 ico, Central America, and over a large portion of >South America. It breeds as far 

 south as Sable Island, and also in Newfoundland, in Labrador, in Alaska, and in the 

 higher Arctic regions generally. A limited number "winter in the Gulf States ; but 

 in all the rest of North America this bird appears only in its migrations, passing 

 sloAvly north in the spring, pausing on its way at every suitable feeding-place, and 

 finally passing out of the United States about the last of May. Witliin four or five 

 weeks of the final departure of the last stragglers of the movement northward, the 

 advance of the returning host begins to reappear, moving southward. It can hardly 

 be that those Avhich thus early show themselves in Ncav England — some of them 

 early in July — and even in regions much farther south, can ha\^e attended to the 

 duties of incubation. Their reappearance thus early can only be satisfactorily ex- 

 plained by the supposition that both the southern and the northern movements are 

 attended by a certain, but probably not a very large, proportion of unmated, imma- 

 ture, or barren birds. These accompany their kindred in their journey north in the 

 spring, linger behind in the rich feeding-places on their AA^ay, and being uudetained 



^ Some young specimens, apparently of the same age and almost certainly the same species, in the 

 collection differ very strikingly from the above description in the less amount or total absence of rufous 

 above, the feathers having merely narrow ochraceous borders, and scarcely any white on the ends of the 

 feathers ; the whole plumage being thus \'ery much duller. 



