THE SHORE Birps. 213 
of the ocean. When this sound, coming from the 
throats of many plovers, is heard after dark, it is 
particularly striking, as wild and weird as the whis- 
tling of the wind through the rigging of a ship at 
sea. 
This little plover nests on our sea-coast, and makes 
most violent demonstrations and pleads piteously 
when the eggs are approached. I found them nest- 
ing in the meadows back of Holly Beach, on the 
New Jersey coast, in June, 1893. 
In August many scores of these birds come up the 
Delaware River as far as tide-water extends, feeding 
on the gravel-bars and mud-flats at low tide, and oc- 
casionally following up the courses of the creeks 
until they find themselves well into the country. 
Wilson’s Plover is less common, but not at all rare 
on the Southern New Jersey coast, and, like the piping, 
comes up our rivers, and when there is quite the 
same in habits as the preceding. It is not unusual 
to find on one sand-bar these two plovers, the san- 
derling, and a few “peeps.” They run in and out 
among the little hills and hollows in the mud, each 
uttering its own cry, and together filling the air with 
a pleasant piping and twittering that is, as a whole, 
musical, Flush them and they will get up as one 
flock, but before they have gone far will separate and 
keep apart until the cause of alarm has gone, when 
they reassemble, and as one happy family pursue 
their insect-hunting, each after its own fashion, but 
all without a trace of quarrelling. The little minnows 
that are often left in pools at low tide are eaten by 
all these little plover. 
