SOLITARY SANDPIPER O 



Adults have a partial prenuptial molt, between February and May, 

 involving the body plumage, the tail and some scapulars, wing cov- 

 erts, and tertials. The complete postnuptial molt begins in July with 

 the change of the body plumage and may last through September, 

 but the primaries are not molted until the winter months, December 

 to February. The winter plumage is similar to the nuptial, but the 

 upper parts are grayer and less distinctly spotted ; the neck and chest 

 are only very indistinctly streaked with grayish. 



Food. — Dr. Elliott Coues (1874) has described the feeding habits 

 of solitary sandpipers so well that I can not do better than to quote 

 his words, as follows : 



Tliey differ from most of their relatives in tlieir clioice of feeding grounds or 

 of places where they usually alight to rest while migrating ; a difference accom- 

 panied, I suppose, by a corresponding modification in diet. Their favorite 

 resorts are the margins of small, stagnant pools, fringed with rank grass and 

 weeds ; the miry, tide-water ditches that intersect marshes ; and the soft, oozy 

 depressions in low meadows and water savannas. They frequent also the 

 interior of woods not too thick and collect there about the rain puddles, the 

 water of which is delayed in sinking by the matted layer of decaying leaves that 

 covers the ground. After heavy rains I have seen them running about like grass 

 plovers on open, level commons, covered only with short turf. They also have a 

 fancy, shared by few birds except the titlarks, for the pools .of liquid manure 

 usually found in some out of the way place upon the thrifty farmer's premises. 

 They find abundant food in all these places, aquatic insects of all sorts, and 

 especially their curious larvae, worms, grubs, and perhaps the smallest sorts of 

 molluscs; with ail these they also take into their gizzards a quantity of sand 

 and gravel, to help along the grinding process. With food to be had in such 

 plenty with little labor the birds become, particularly in the fall, extremely fat. 



Edward H. Forbush (1912) says: 



In the fall, on its return from the north, it has a habit of wading inro the 

 water in stagnant ditches or ponds, where it advances one foot at a time, and by 

 rapidly moving the forward foot stirs up the vegetation at the bottom ever so 

 slightly. This motion is so swift and delicate that the leg seems to be merely 

 trembling, as if the bird were chilled by contact with the water, but it is done 

 with intent to disturb insects among the algae at the bottom without roiling the 

 water, and the eager bird, leaning forward, plunges in its bill and head, some- 

 times to the eyes, and catches the alarmed water insects as they dart away. 

 I have watched this carefully with a glass while lying in the grass only 10 or 12 

 feet from the bird. It is easy by stirring the bottom slightly with a stick to 

 cause a similar movement of the water insects, but I never could agitate it so 

 delicately as to avoid clouding the water with sediment from the bottom. 



Giraud (1844) says that " on the wing it is very active, and is some- 

 times seen darting after winged insects, which it is expert in catch- 

 ing," Other observers have noted in its food various insects and their 

 larvae, dragon-fly nymphs, water-scavenger beetles, water boatmen, 

 grasshoppers, caterpillars, spiders, worms, small crustaceans, and 

 small frogs. 



