SANDERLING. 423 



Point, Patagonia, on the east side ; whilst on the Pacific it 

 ranges as far south as Chili. 



The nest of the Sanderling from which Major Feilden shot 

 the male bird was placed on a gravel ridge, at an altitude of 

 several hundred feet above the sea, and the two eggs were 

 deposited in a slight depression in the centre of a recumbent 

 plant of willow, the lining of the nest consisting of a few 

 withered leaves and some of the last year's catkins. The 

 two eggs figured in Major Feilden' s Appendix to Sir G. Nares' 

 Narrative, ii. p. 210, are of a greenish-buff spotted with 

 brown of various shades, and measure 1'4 by 1 in. Mr. 

 Dresser has compared them to miniature Curlews' eggs of a 

 pale colour. An egg taken on the Barren Grounds of the 

 Anderson River from a nest composed of hay and decayed 

 leaves, and figured by Prof. Newton (P.Z.S. 1871, pi. iv. 

 fig. 2), is somewhat darker in colour : its measurements are 

 given as 1'43 by "98 in. 



The Sanderling obtains its food principally by probing the 

 moist sands of the sea-shores, and the contents of the stomach 

 of those shot while thus occupied, were slender sea-worms, 

 minute shell-fish, gravel, and Crustacea. Major Feilden 

 observed that, like other waders in the Arctic regions, the 

 Sanderling fed upon the buds of Saxifraga oppositifolia. 

 The fat on the body is sometimes nearly a quarter of an inch 

 in thickness. 



An adult male in summer plumage, killed on the 12th of 

 June, the bird from which the figure was drawn, had the 

 beak black ; irides brown ; the feathers on the top of the 

 head and back of the neck black in the centre, edged with 

 rufous ; interscapulars, scapulars, tertials, back, and rump, 

 black, each feather edged with red ; wing-coverts greyish- 

 black ; wing-primaries black on the outer web, greyish-white 

 on the inner web, the shaft white ; middle tail-feathers rather 

 pointed and greyish-black, the others greyish-white ; chin, 

 throat, sides of the neck, and upper part of the breast, 

 covered with small spots of rufous and black on a white 

 ground ; all the under surface of the body and wings pure 

 white ; axillary plume white ; legs, toes, and claws, dark 



