136 NOTES ON THE 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Bill rather longer than the head, straight, slender, com- 

 pressed; wing long, pointed; tail short; legs, lower half of the 

 tibia naked; toes moderate, slender, margined, the outer and 

 middle united at the base; rump and upper tail coverts white, 

 the latter transversely barred with ashy-brown; the other 

 upper parts ashy, many feathers having large arrowheads and 

 irregular spots of brownish-black, and edged with ashy-white; 

 under parts white, with numerous longitudinal lines on the 

 neck before, and arrowheads on the sides of dark ashy-brown; 

 axillaries and under wing coverts white, with bands of ashy- 

 brown, very indistinct in many specimens, but generally well 

 defined; quills brownish-black; tail ashy white with transverse 

 bands of dark-brown, middle feathers darker; bill greenish- 

 black; legs yellow; iris dark brown. 



Length, 10 to 11; wing, 6 to 6.50; tail, 2.50; bill, 1.50; tarsus, 2. 



Habitat, America in general. 



TOTANUS SOLITARIUS (Wilson). (256.) 

 SOLITARY SANDPIPER. 



This little shorebird reaches us as late as the 10th of May; 

 rarely earlier, and always in pairs. They are at once found 

 running along the shores of ponds, lakes and streams, with 

 very little regard to solitude, as the din of all the vast flouring 

 and saw mills, with trains of cars passing on an average of 

 every ten minutes, to which vastly more confusion should be 

 added, does not in the least disturb them. Their food consists 

 of aquatic insects and their larvas, with minute mollusca enter- 

 ing in to vary the variety. In a short time, or about the 25th 

 of May, they principally disappear, evidently to nest and rear 

 their young, for only a few are seen, and then in unmistakable 

 solitude. This continues until early in August, when they 

 begin to seek the former localities in family parties of from six 

 to eight. As the summer passes into autumn, these families 

 become winged communities of thirty, forty, or more, which 

 increase in size to some extent until they leave, about the first 

 of October. They are universally distributed over the entire 

 State. 



I have several times had the eggs of this species brought to 

 me, with all but positive assurance that the identification was 

 correct, and I hear of others in the possession of amateur 

 o5logists, reputedly collected locally, but in the case of the- 

 former, the eggs have either been those of the Spotted Sand- 

 pipers, of which I have a full supply of my own collection, or 



