SEMIPALMATED PLOVER 223 



During high tide, when their best feeding grounds are covered, these 

 birds, like many other shore birds, are very apt to be found sleeping 

 on the upper beach above the reach of the waves. The flock is gen- 

 erally huddled closely together, some standing but many squatting 

 with their breasts resting on the sand, often in the lee of bunches of 

 seaweeed. While some sleep with heads turned to one side and bills 

 thrust into the feathers of the back in the usual manner of birds, 

 others sleep with heads sunk down between the shoulders. Generally 

 some of the flock are awake and on the lookout, while the others open 

 their eyes from time to time. 



In flight the flocks are often compact, twisting and turning as if 

 animated by a single thought, but they also fly in loose order. On 

 alighting they at once spread out on the sand in true plover fashion, 

 and do not, like sandpipers, keep together and move along close to the 

 wave line. Another plover habit which at once distinguishes them 

 from sanderlings or other sandpipers of a similar size, is that of run- 

 ning about with heads up and dabbing suddenly at the ground from 

 time to time instead of moving along with heads down diligently 

 probing the sand. With erect figures they run about in various direc- 

 tions, often pausing and standing still as if in thought, occasionally 

 jerking or bobbing their heads and necks and ever and again swiftly 

 dabbing at some morsel of food. 



The semipalmated plover associates most frequently with the least 

 and semipalmated sandpipers, but it also flies with sanderlings and 

 other larger waders. Sometimes these birds fly in mixed flocks, but 

 as a rule the ringnecks keep by themselves in flight, but readily join 

 other species on the ground. 



On the seacoast the ringneck frequents the outer beaches, the shores 

 and mud flats of estuaries and tidals pools, and the sloughs in the 

 salt marshes. Inland it visits similar regions on the shores of lakes 

 and rivers as well as upland fields in search of food. As I have said 

 elsewhere (C. W. Townsend, 1905) : 



Like all shore birds also, the ringnecli is often exceedingly fat in the autumn, 

 and I have known the fat of the breast to split open when the bird struck the 

 ground after being shot when tiying at a height. The fat is not only every wliere 

 under the skin, but it develops all the viscera, and the liver is often pale from 

 fatty infiltration. How birds under these circumstances are able to fly so 

 vigorously on their long migrations, or even to fly at all, is certainly a mystery. 



Voice. — The courtship song has already been described. The com- 

 mon call note is a clear, rather plaintive, whistle of two notes, very 

 distinctive and frequently emitted while the birds are on the wing. 

 It is expressed by Hoffmann (1904) by the syllables chee-wee; Nichols 

 (1920) writes it tyoo-eep. It is cheerful and businesslike compared 

 with the sweet and mournful whistle of the piping plover. When 



