WESTERN" SANDPIPER 265 



records are considered doubtful, while in other regions it may be 

 more numerous than is now known. One was taken August 21. 1907, 

 at Beaver, Pennsylvania, while two were collected at Burlington, 

 Iowa, on October 15, 1895, and one at Columbus, Ohio, on September 

 12, 1925. 



Egg dates. — Alaska : 159 records, Ma} 7 23 to July 7 : 80 records, May 

 29 to June 15. 



CROCETHIA ALBA (Pallas) 



SANDERLING 



HABITS 



Along the forearm of Cape Cod, from the elbow at Chatham to 

 the wrist near Provincetown, extend about 30 miles of nearly con- 

 tinuous ocean beaches, to which we can add 10 more if we include 

 that long, narrow strip of beach and marsh called Monomoy. Facing 

 the broad Atlantic and exposed to all its furious storms, these beaches 

 are swept clean and pounded to a hard surface by the ceaseless waves. 

 Even in calm weather the restless ocean swells and surges up and 

 down over these sloping sands, and the winter storms may make 

 or wash away a mile or so of beach in a single season. Here on the 

 ocean side of the beach, the "back side of the beach," as it is called 

 on the cape, is the favorite resort of the little sanderlings in fair 

 weather or in foul. They are well named " beach birds," for here they 

 are seldom found anywhere except on the ocean beaches, and I 

 belieA'e that the same is true of the Pacific coast. They are particu- 

 larly active and happy during stormy weather, for then a bountiful 

 supply of food is cast up by the heavy surf. But at all times the surf 

 line attracts them, where they nimbly follow the receding waves to 

 snatch their morsels of food or skillfully dodge the advancing line 

 of foam as it rolls up the beach. 



Spring. — To the ends of the earth and back again extend the migra- 

 tions of the sandcrling, the cosmopolitan globe trotter; few species, 

 if any, equal it in world-wide wanderings. Nesting in the Arctic 

 regions of both hemispheres, it migrates through all of the continents, 

 and many of the islands, to the southernmost limits of south America 

 and Africa, and even to Australia. 



The spring migration starts in March, though the last migrants 

 may not leave their winter resorts until late in April; they have been 

 noted in Chile from April 11 to 29, and even in May. The earliest 

 migrants have been known to reach New England and Ohio before 

 the end of March. The main flight passes through Massachusetts 

 in May, a few birds lingering into June. In the interior and on 

 the Pacific coast the dates are about the same. C. G. Harrold has 

 taken it in Manitoba as early as April 29, but William Rowan (1926) 



