SCOLOPACIDA. 4299 
amongst heather or long grass, generally nearly on 
a level with, and not far from, the sea; but it is 
occasionally placed much higher, indeed at several 
hundred feet above the sea.* 
The variations in the plumage of the Dunlin have 
led to some little confusion, Bewick calling the bird 
in its summer plumage the Dunlin (T’ringa alpina of 
of Linneus) and in the winter plumage the Purre 
(T’. cunclus of Linneeus). Montagu appears to have 
fallen into the same error, but to have corrected it in 
the appendix to his ‘ Ornithological Dictionary.’ 
The winter plumage is as follows:—The beak is 
black: irides black; the head, neck, back and 
scapulars uniform ash-grey, with black shafts to the 
feathers; the wing-coverts are dark dusky in the 
centre, broadly margined with ash-grey; the greater 
coverts of primaries black, some of them slightly 
tipped with white; greater coverts of secondaries 
dusky, tipped and slightly edged with white; pri- 
maries dark dusky, shafts white, and a patch of 
white on the outer web of all but the first four—this, 
with the white tips of the coverts of the secondaries, 
makes a white bar on the open wing; the tertials are 
ash-grey; the rump and central tail-coverts darker 
than the back; the outer tail-coverts white; the 
tail-feathers are very pale ash-grey, except the two 
centre ones, which are dusky; the chin is white; 
* See ‘ Zoologist’ for 1866 (Second Series, p. 513). 
