SPOTTED SANDPIPER 85 



is very limited and very variable; I have seen birds in juvenal 

 plumage as late as December 3. The first winter plumage is like the 

 adult winter, except for the retained juvenal wing coverts. It is 

 worn until March or April. The wings are molted during the winter 

 at any time from October to April; and during March and April 

 the body plumage is molted, producing the first nuptial plumage. 

 This is like the adult nuptial, but there is more gray on the sides of 

 the neck and less spotting on the breast, sometimes very littie of the 

 latter. But the plumage is practically adult, except for a few retained 

 juvenal wing coverts. 



Adults have a complete postnuptial molt beginning with the body 

 plumage in August, or earlier, and ending with the molt of the 

 primaries at any time from October to April. In winter plumage 

 the upper parts are plain " dark grayish olive," shading off lighter 

 on the sides of the head and neck ; the under parts are white, faintly 

 washed with grayish on the throat. The partial prenuptial molt, 

 involving only the body plumage comes in March and April and 

 produces the spotted breast of the nuptial plumage.] 



Food. — At the seacoast the spotted sandpiper searches for its food 

 both on the beach and on the muddy borders of creeks and inlets, 

 wading into the water, however, less frequently than most sand- 

 pipers; inland it feeds along the margins of sandy ponds, sluggish 

 meadow streams and rushing mountain torrents ; in farming country 

 it strays into the meadows, fields, and market gardens and finds in 

 all these situations food which it picks up from the low vegetation or 

 from the ground. 



Like some of the other sandpipers, however, and like several other 

 birds which have the agility to do so, it easily captures flying insects 

 even when they are on the wing. In order to come within striking 

 distance of an insect before it flies away, the spotted sandpiper 

 resorts to a ruse by which its approaching head and beak are con- 

 cealed or made inconspicuous. As the bird walks over windrows 

 of seaweed and such places where flies abound, it stretches its body 

 out with the bill pointing straight in front, the whole bird lengthened 

 into a line with the long axis parallel to the ground. In this position 

 the head, from the flies' point of view is masked by the bodj^ as a 

 background and the bird is enabled to come so near that it can snap 

 up a fl}', even after it has taken wing, by a straight forward move- 

 ment of the head. In stalking a flying prey the spotted sandpiper 

 creeps up to the fly, moving slowly with cat-like steps, the tail 

 motionless, and apparently never adopts the well-known trick of the 

 semipalmated sandpiper, the running about with the hind part of 

 the body tilted far upward, advancing upon a fly under cover of 

 this as a screen. 



