COMMON RIXG-PLOVER. 117 



Male in Winter. — This most lively and beautiful little 

 bird, which is a constant resident in Britain, and occurs on 

 all our flat coasts, is of a compact form, having the body 

 moderately full and a little compressed ; the neck short ; 

 the head rather large, and much rounded above. The bill is 

 about half the length of the head, straight, slightly com- 

 pressed near the end ; its upper mandible with the dorsal 

 line straight and the ridge flattened for nearly two-thirds, 

 then arched and convex, the nasal groove extending to the 

 commencement of the arched part, the edges soft and some- 

 what inflected, the tip bluntish, but sharp-edged, as is that 

 of the lower mandible, of which the angle is moderate, the 

 dorsal line ascending and somewhat convex. 



The nostrils are sub-basal, lateral, linear, two-twelfths 

 long, occupying the middle of the nasal groove. The eyes 

 large, their aperture having a diameter of two-twelfths and a 

 half. The feet are of moderate length and slender ; the tibia 

 bare for about a quarter of an inch ; the tarsus a little com- 

 pressed, and covered with hexagonal scales ; the toes rather 

 short, flattened beneath, marginate, the outer and middle 

 connected by a basal web extending as far as the second 

 joint of the former ; the inner or second with eighteen, the 

 third with thirty, the fourth with twenty-live scutella. The 

 claws are short, compressed, slightly arched, slender, rather 

 acute. 



The plumage is very soft, and rather blended ; the 

 feathers ovate and rounded. The wings long, pointed, when 

 closed reaching to the end of the tail ; the quills twenty-six ; 

 the first longest, the second a twelfth shorter, the other pri- 

 maries rapidly graduated ; the secondaries curved inwards 

 and obliquely rounded, excepting the inner, which are very 

 long and taper to a blunt point, one of them reaching to 

 half-an-inch of the end of the first primary in the closed 

 wing. The tail is of moderate length, nearly straight, con- 

 siderably rounded, the two middle feathers sub-acuminate. 



The bill is black at the end, orange in the rest of its 

 extent. The iris brown. The feet orange, the claws black. 

 A band on the forehead, a line over the eye, the lower eyelid, 

 the throat, and a broad band proceeding obliquely backwards 



