SANDERLING 271 



broadly tipped, and all except those of the crown are also notched, 

 with buff; the sides of the head, neck, and breast are washed with 

 buff; before these birds reach us on migration these buff tints have 

 mostly faded out to creamy yellow or white; the feathers of the 

 lower back, rump, and upper tail coverts are ashy brown or grayish 

 buff, each with a dusky shaft streak and narrowly tipped with 

 dusky; as these feathers are not molted during the first winter they 

 produce a peculiar rump pattern by which young birds can be easily 

 recognized. Young birds are in juvenal plumage when they arrive 

 here, with conspicuous black and white backs. But the post juvenal 

 molt begins in September and is generally completed before Novem- 

 ber; this molt involves the body plumage, except the rump, and 

 some of the wing coverts and tertials. The first winter plumage is 

 like that of the adult, plain gray above and white below, except for 

 the retained juvenal feathers as indicated above. 



A partial, or perhaps nearly complete, prenuptial molt takes place 

 in young birds between March and May, involving the body plum- 

 age, sometimes the tail and most of the scapulars and wing coverts. 

 In this first nuptial plumage young birds are much like adults, but 

 can be recognized by some retained wing coverts and tertials; the 

 latter are shorter than in adults, reaching not quite to the tip of the 

 fourth primary in the folded wing; in the adult wing the tertials 

 reach nearly to the tip of the third primary. At the next molt, the 

 first postnuptial, the adult winter plumage is assumed. 



Adults have a complete postnuptial molt from July to October or 

 later. The body plumage is molted first, mainly in August and 

 September, and the wings later, mainly in October; specimens have 

 been seen with primaries in molt in February and March, but these 

 are probably abnormal. The prenuptial molt of adults is incomplete, 

 Involving nearly all of the body plumage, but not all of the feathers 

 of the back, scapulars, tertials, or wing coverts. The fresh nuptial 

 plumage in early May is veiled with broad grayish white tips, which 

 soon wear away. There is great individual variation in the amount 

 of red assumed and in the molting date. 



Food. — The sanderling obtains most of its food by probing in the 

 wet sand of the seashore or by picking up what is washed up and left 

 by the receding waves. The former method is well described by Dr. 

 Charles W. Townsend (1920) as follows: 



On the hard wet sand of the beaches one may see in places the characteristic 

 probings of the sanderling without a trace of their foot marks, and these may 

 be the cause of considerable mystery to the uninitiated. While the semipal- 

 mated sandpiper runs about with his head down dabbing irregularly here and 

 there, the sanderling vigorously probes the sand in a series of holes a quarter of 

 an inch to an inch apart in straight or curving lines a foot to 2 feet long. 

 Sometimes the probings are so near together that the line is almost a continu- 

 ous one like the furrow of a miniatv« plough. The sand is thrown up in 



