RED-BACKED SANDPIPER 225 



" ochraceous tawny," "hazel," and buffy white; the scapulars are 

 black, edged with "light ochraceous buff"; the wing coverts are 

 gray, tipped with pale buff; the rump and upper tail coverts are 

 " hair brown " to " drab " ; the breast is tinged with grayish and 

 pale buff and streaked with dusky; the throat and rest of the under 

 parts are white, conspicuously and more or less heavily spotted with 

 dusky on the sides of the belly. This beautiful plumage is worn for 

 only a short time and is molted before the birds leave their northern 

 breeding grounds. The post ju venal molt begins in August and is 

 generally finished before October; it involves nearly all of the body 

 plumage, nearly all of the scapulars, and some of the tertials, but 

 not the rump, upper tail coverts, or flight feathers. 



In first winter plumage young birds are much like adults, but 

 the ashy brown upper parts are usually somewhat paler, and they can 

 always be recognized by the juvenal wing coverts and a few re- 

 tained scapulars and tertials. A partial prenuptial molt, similar 

 to that of the adult, produces a first nuptial plumage, in which young 

 birds can be distinguished only by the retained juvenal wing coverts. 

 In fresh plumage the black belly patch is veiled with white tips, 

 which soon wear away and leave this area clear black. 



The first postnuptial molt of young birds and the corresponding 

 molt of adults produce adult winter plumages. The molt is com- 

 plete and begins in July or even late in June; the wings are appar- 

 ently molted first in July, and are entirely renewed before the birds 

 start to migrate; the body molt begins in August and lasts through 

 September; there are usually traces of the old nuptial plumage left 

 when the birds arrive here on migration. The partial prenuptial 

 molt of adults comes in April and May and involves the body 

 plumage, but not all the scapulars or rump or wing coverts. 



Food. — Red-backed sandpipers obtain their food on the ocean 

 beaches at low tide, on sandy flats or on mud flats, often feeding in 

 company with sanderlings, or with other small shore birds. Some 

 writers have referred to them as nervous and active running about in 

 a lively manner while feeding, but I have usually found them rather 

 sluggish and inactive at such times, easily approached and unsus- 

 picious. Their food consists of small mollusks, sand fleas, and other 

 small crustaceans, amphipods, flies and other insects and their larvae, 

 diving and other aquatic beetles, marine worms, and occasionally a 

 few seeds of aquatic plants. They are apt to gather where fish 

 cleanings and other offal are thrown out, to feed on the flies and other 

 insects that abound there. Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1905) writes: 



In feeding they frequently plunge the bill, slightly open to its base in the soft 

 sand or mud, appear to work it about and when successful draw forth an am- 

 phipod or a worm. Several times on one occasion I saw one draw a worm to 

 the water close at hand as if to wash it before swallowing it. On another 

 occasion a couple of dunlins were so tame that it was possible to approach 



