BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 153 



himself, is disinclined to let his oological acquisition lend its 

 rush light to the State Natural History Survey. Dr. Hvoslef 

 writes me that he obtained the species in Lanesboro on the 

 first and fourth of August, 1884. Mr. Lewis did not meet 

 with the nests in Becker county, but found the birds occasion- 

 ally in July and August. I have seen flocks still flying about 

 in one year as late at the 20th of October, but this was excep- 

 tional. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Small, wings long; toes connected at base, especially the 

 outer to the middle toe; front, throat, ring around the neck, 

 and entire upper parts, white; a band of deep black across the 

 breast, extending around the back of the neck below the 

 white ring; band from the base of the bill, under the eye, 

 and wide frontal band above the white band, black; upper 

 parts light ashy-brown, with a tinge of olive; quills brownish- 

 black, with their shafts white in the middle protion, and occa- 

 sionally a lanceolate white spot along the shafts of the shorter 

 primaries; shorter tertiaries edged with white; lesser coverts 

 tipped with white; middle feathers of the tail ashy olive- 

 brown, with a wide subterminal band of brownish-black, and 

 narrowly tipped with white; the two outer tail feathers white, 

 others intermediate like the middle, but widely tipped with 

 white; bill orange-yellow, tipped with black; legs yellow. 'CZ^j 



Length, 7; wing, 4.75; tail, 2.25. 



Habitat, Arctic and Subarctic America. 



Family APHEIZID^F]. 



ARENARIA INTERPRES (L ) (283.) 

 TURNSTONE. 



I can only record this species as extremely rare, as I have 

 but a few instances of its observation amongst my notes for 

 almost thirty years. 



The earliest was in the fall of 1867, when I found it in a 

 collection of mounted birds, the individual having been ob- 

 tained recently in a flock of Sandpipers, on the Mississippi 

 river just below St. Paul. 



I saw no more until 1874, which I obtained from another 

 flock of Sandpipers near Minneapolis, since which one or two 

 have come into our market in strings of scolopacine birds, and 

 always in autumn. 



