SANDERLING. 119 
as if purposely to puzzle an ornithologist and confound 
all his theories, a female shot on the 2nd of June has 
scarcely any red margins to the feathers on the upper 
surface of the body, and the chin, throat, and neck 
are almost as little tinged with red as in those last 
described. The females as a rule are certainly less rich 
in colour than the males, there being more grey mixed 
with the red and black on the upper parts, even 
late in the season, and their throats, however ruddy, 
show a white ground; whilst in fine adult males the 
dark spots on the throat may be almost said to rest on 
a red ground, so evenly is that colour distributed ; still I 
cannot agree with General Sabine when he says, in the 
appendix to Sir Edward Parry’s first Arctic Voyage, 
that the chin, throat, and fore part of the neck in the 
female sanderling may be described “as white, with a 
very slight sprinkling of dark spots, and scarcely any 
appearance of red,’ as I have dissected one or two 
females with so much red on those parts that I was 
quite unable otherwise to determine the sex. The 
plumage of six specimens killed on the 8th of June 
(four males and two females), and one female shot on the 
2nd, may be thus described in general terms :—In three 
of the males, the feathers of the upper portions of the 
plumage are pure red and black, in the fourth male red 
and black mixed with grey as in females.* Their throats 
all more or less ruddy, but none of them equal in depth 
of colouring to the old male shot on the 26th of May. 
* T was much struck on one or two occasions with the 
wonderful similarity in colouring between the plumage of these 
birds and the shingle of the beach, which, consisting of minute 
fragments of flint and pebbles, mixed with the debris of shells, was 
as prettily varied with red, white, and black as the backs of the 
sanderlings; and it was by no means easy to detect a specimen, 
even when intentionally placed amongst the smaller stones. 
