150 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



from view, except when they jumped up from time to time. The flock must 

 have numbered 75. The tide was high and the birds were evidently trying 

 to kill time until low water, when they could gather their food from the 

 seaweed covered rocks. Most of them were resting, squatting on the rock 

 with head to the wind, their dark purplish-gray backs contrasting strongly 

 with their white bellies. Others were slowly raising their wings over their 

 backs, showing the white under surfaces. Again they were chasing each other, 

 making the sleepy ones jump suddenly, or running up the rock to escape an 

 unusually high wave, fluttering with their wings to help themselves. From time 

 to time they were joined by bunches of from 5 to 10 others. 



Voice. — This species is a rather silent bird, but John T. Nichols 

 says in his notes : " When about to take wing a flock of purple sand- 

 pipers is rather noisy, keeping up a swallowlike chatter, each single- 

 syllabled note suggestive of the flip of the tree swallow and of the 

 kip of the sanderling." 



Field marks. — A sandpiper seen on a rocky shore in New England 

 in winter is likely to be a purple sandpiper. Mr. Nichols suggests 

 the following field characters: 



The purple sandpiper is a stockily built bird, which stands low and has a 

 moderately long bill. Its breast and upper parts of a dark purplish gray match 

 admirably the rocks on which it lives, and although darker are not very differ- 

 ent in tone from the coloring of the red-backed sandpiper in fall, with which 

 species it might possibly be confused. Both have a white line in the wing 

 shown in flight, but in the purple sandpiper this broadens to a more con- 

 spicuous wedge of white backward on the inner secondaries and extends across 

 the bases of the primaries as narrow edging to their coverts, rather than turning 

 the bend of the wing into the primaries. The best field character is the color of 

 legs and feet, which are of a dull but strong yellow, appreciable at a consider- 

 able distance. The basal third of the bill is of the same, but tinged with orange. 



Fall. — The fall migration of the purple sandpiper is a gradual 

 southward movement along the Atlantic coast. It disappears from 

 its breeding grounds early in September, but the main flight does not 

 reach New England until November or December. What few strag- 

 glers have been seen on the Great Lakes were probably migrants 

 from Hudson Bay. E. W. Hadeler writes to me that he obsen T ed 

 one on the shore of Lake Erie, Painesville, Ohio, from October 22 

 to November 12, 1916, and again from October 24 to November 11, 

 1922. It is interesting to note the uniformity of the dates and the fact 

 that the species Avas seen always on a stone breakwater, apparently 

 feeding exclusively on the water-washed stones. 



Winter. — The purple sandpiper is the " winter snipe " of the New 

 England coast, where flocks of from 25 to 75 or more may be found 

 regularly on certain outlying rocky ledges. Here they seek shelter 

 among the rocks from the flying spray and from the wintry blasts; 

 and here they find their food washed up by the waves or hidden in 

 the half floating beds of rockweed. On December 10, 1913, while 

 we were shooting eiders on one of the outer ledges in Jericho Bay, 



