BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER 161 



the back. Young birds apparently renew the primaries in February 

 and March and the first postnuptial molt, the folloAving summer 

 and fall, produces the adult winter plumage. 



Adults have a partial prenuptial molt between February and May, 

 involving the body plumage, usually the tail, some of the wing 

 coverts and tertials, but not all the scapulars, back and rump feathers. 

 The complete postnuptial molt, begins with the acquisition of white 

 feathers in the under body plumage in August and the body molt 

 lasts through September, while the birds are migrating. The wings 

 are molted later, from September to December. In winter plumage 

 the black breast is entirely replaced by dull white, more or less 

 marked or shaded Avith pale, ashy brown; and the upper parts are 

 dull, ashy brown, the feathers tipped with white and subterminally 

 shaded with blackish brown. No trace of the nuptial body plumage 

 is left and adults and young look very much alike. 



Food. — The main feeding grounds of the black-bellied plover along 

 the coasts are on the broad, tidal, sand flats, and mud flats; there 

 are many such flats about Chatham and other places on Cape Cod, 

 where the receding tide leaves many square miles of flat mud or 

 sand, dotted with little islands of tall marsh grass. These are favor- 

 ite resorts for plover, where they may be seen away off on the edge of 

 the water, perhaps a mile from the shore, feeding on marine worms, 

 small moUusks, crustaceans, and marine insects. As the advancing 

 tide drives them in onto the marshes or sand dunes, they find other 

 food; Mr. Mackay (1892) says that "they feed also on the larvae of 

 one of the cutworms (Noctuidae) which they obtain on the marshes. 

 They also eat the large whitish maritime grasshopper {Oedipoda 

 maritima).^^ 



In the interior they fed, around the shores of the larger lakes 

 and on open flats, on various forms of aquatic life. They also resort 

 to some extent to meadows and upland pastures, where the grass is 

 short, and to plowed fields; here they do some good by devouring 

 grasshoppers, locusts, cutworms, grubs, beetles, and earthworms. 

 They also eat some seeds and berries. Mr. Forbush (1912) says that 

 Prof. Samuel Aughey found the stomachs of two of these birds 

 " crammed with the destructive Rocky Mountain locust." 



Grinnell, Bryant, and Storer (1918) mention a bird taken in Cali- 

 fornia which had in its stomach "14 small snails, 1 small bivalve 

 mollusk, and parts of 2 or more small crabs." I once watched a bird 

 in Florida, which fed for some time on the broken remains of a dead 

 crab. 



Behavior. — Mr. Brandt, in his notes, pays the following tribute 

 to the power of flight of this fine bird : 



Only those who havo met the lordly hlack-bellied plover on his native heath 

 can appreciate how he seems to rule with a martial air the domains under 



