782 SYSTEMATIC SYNOPSIS. — LTAflCOL^. 



Nova Scotia ; on Pacific side to Lower California. Winters to West Indies and S. Am. from 

 Louisiana and Texas. Breeds tliroughout its regular Nortli American range ; I have found it 

 doing so in abundance on the North Carolina coast, in June, as others have N. to New Jersey. 

 Eggs usually 3, laid on bare shingle or in sparse beach grass, 1.22-L45 long X 1.00-1.05 broad, 

 pale olive-drab, more greenish in some cases, more clay-colored in others, thickly marked all 

 over witli blackish-brovvn in irregular sliarply defined spots, splashes, and fine dots, among 

 wliich are some neutral tint shell-markings ; the blotches seldom if ever numerous or conflu- 

 ent enough to obscure the ground color. Note low, piping, and rather plamtive ; disposition 

 gentle and confiding. 



JE. moii'gola. (Lat. Mongola, a Mongol, inhabitant of Mongolia; Arabic, Persian, and 

 Hindu Mughal, a Mongol or Mogul. Fig. 534.) MONGOLIAN Plover. Adult J" 9 , in sum- 

 mer : Above, brownish-gray ; below, white, with a broad cinnamon or chestnut pectoral bar, 



extending more or less along sides, encircling 

 neck behind, and somewhat tingeiug pileum ; 

 this baud tending to be narrowly edged with 

 black anteriorly, in high plumage. A long 

 black subocular stripe, involving lores and au- 

 riculars, reaching to bill, continuous in front 

 of eye with a black frontlet, in which is a white 

 area of variable size, sometimes divided by a 

 narrow median line of black which connects the 

 black frontlet with base of culmen. Wing- 

 feathers dusky ; shaft of first primary white ; 

 Fig. 534. — Mongolian Plover. (From Seebohm's several inner primaries with white area along 

 Charadmdae.) their outer webs ; secondaries and greater cov- 



erts tipped with white. Tail-feathers like back, tipped with white, and successively paler lat- 

 erally, till the outermost are nearly white ; upper tail-coverts also tipped with whitish. Bill 

 black ; feet blackish ; iris dark brown. The adults in winter, and young, lack distinctive 

 chestnut and black markings, though the breast may be somewhat sufi'used with pale cinna- 

 mon; at an early age all the feathers of upper parts have pale sandy edgings, and the feet 

 are yellowish gray. Length 7.00-7.50; wing 5.25; tail 2.25; bill 0.70; tarsus 1.15; middle 

 toe 0.75. Eggs 1.45 X 1.05, pale brownish-olive, sparingly speckled with blackish-brown. 

 A vrell-known species of wide distribution in the Old World, recorded from Choris Peninsula, 

 Alaska (Ibis, 1870, p. 384; P. Z. S. 1871, pp. Ill, 114). It is entirely difl"erent from any 

 other Plover described in this work, being closely related to jE. geoffroyi, and thus a member 

 of the subgenus Ochthodronms, though not so put by the A. 0. U. (see Sharpe, Cat. B. Brit. 

 Mus. xxiv, 1896, p. 223). Charadrius mongolus Pallas, Reise, iii, 1776, p. 700. C. mon- 

 golicus Pallas, Zoog. R.-A. ii, 1811, or 1826, p. 136. Pluviarhgnchus mongolus Bonap. 

 Comptes Rendus, xliii, 1856, p. 417. ^gialites mongolus Swinhoe, P. Z. S. 1870, p. 140. 

 jJl^gialitis mongolicus Swinhoe, Ibis, 1870, p. 360. Eudromias viongolicus Severtzow, Ibis, 

 1876, p. 327. jEgialitis mongola Swinh. Ibis, 1873, p. 275; Bd. Brew^. and Ridgw. Water 

 B. N. A. i, 1884, p. 167; Stej. Bull. U. S. N. M. No. 29, 1885, p. 105, and Pr. U. S. N. M. 

 x, 1887, p. 126 (Commander Islands, breeding) ; Nelson, Rep. Alaska, 1887, p. 127 ; Ridgw^. 

 Man. 1887, p. 179, A. 0. U. List-s, No. [279]. ^gialites mongolicus CouES, Key, 3d ed. 

 1887, p. 886. Charadrius cirrhepidesmus and C. gularis Wagler, 1827. C. sanguineus 

 Less. 1828. Hiaticula inornata GovLiy, 1846. JEgialitis mastersi Ramsay, 1877. 

 PODASO'CYS. (The Homeric epithet of Achilles, noSas ukvs, podns ohus, swift as to his 

 feet.) Mountain Plover. In general, characters oi JEgialitis ; but no black belt or patches 

 on neck or breast ; a coronal and loral black bar. Size large. Tail short, half the wing, square. 

 Legs very long ; tibife nude over ^ the length of tarsus ; which is more than half as long again 



