394 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
was a young bird of the year. Like the greater 
number of these partially migratory Waders, the 
occurrences of this bird are most frequent in the 
autumn, and next to that in the spring. This spe- 
cies, however, is not so much of a summer resident 
with us as some of the others, as it but rarely if ever 
remains to breed in England; consequently I can 
vive but little or no information about its nesting 
habits, except that Meyer supposes that, hke many 
of the other species included in this family, the nest 
is placed on the ground. 
The food of the Bartailed Godwit consists of 
aquatic insects, worms, beetles and small shell-fish. 
The summer plumage is as follows :—The beak is 
nearly black at the point, reddish brown at the base; 
the irides dusky brown; the space between the beak 
and the eye dark dusky and brick-dust red mixed ; 
head and back of the neck streaked brick-dust red 
and very dark dusky; back, scapulars, lesser wing- 
coverts and tertials dark dusky, all the feathers mar- 
gined with brick-dust red; the greater wing-coverts 
dullish brown, margined with white, but these 
feathers in my specimen may not have assumed 
their full summer colouring, as many of the feathers 
on the back and scapulars had not done so; Yarrell, 
however, describes these feathers as being the same 
both in summer and winter; the rump and tail- 
coverts white, with a few black bars on the latter; 
the tail-feathers brick-dust red, barred with dusky ; 
