SANDPIPERS. 369 



Siih-Family IV. 

 THE SANDPIPERS. TRINGIN^. 



General Characteristics. — Bill generally longer than or as long as the head, 

 slender, compressed on the sides, with the culmen near the tip, slightly depressed 

 and enlarged ; the nostrils basal, and placed in a nasal groove that extends for two- 

 thirds of the bill ; the wings long and pointed ; the tail moderate and rounded ; the 

 tarsi usually long and slender ; the toes more or less long and united at the base. 



These birds frequent marine marshes and the sea-snores, as 

 well as the borders of lakes and rivers. They visit the temperate 

 climates during the winter, and return in large flocks to the colder 

 latitudes to spend the summer months. Like many other birds 

 which have this habit, they are common to both hemispheres, of 

 which they seem to inhabit all the northern parts. During the 

 recess of the tide, they may be seen upon the sea-shore collecting 

 their food from the refuse of the ocean, or quietly and intently 

 probing the moist sands in search of worms and small shell-fish ; 

 sometimes running quickly before the advancing surge, and pro- 

 fiting by what the wave leaves on its retreat. Their plumage is 

 renewed twice in the year, and their summer, or, as it has been 

 called, their nuptial attire, is very different from that with which 

 they are clothed during the rest of the year. The upper plumage 

 is black, with the feathers margined with reddish brown and white, 

 and the whole lower surface rich reddish chestnut. In the winter 

 it is ashy grey above, and white shaded with grey beneath. The 

 colour of the two sexes is nearly alike, but the females are dis- 

 tinguished by their superior size. 



The typical species — 



The Knot Sandpiper {Ti-inga camitus) is a winter resident in Great 

 Britain ; numbers of them arriving early in autumn, and spreading along our 

 shores, take up their residence in bays, or at the mouths of rivers and other 

 flat parts of the coast covered with ooze and sand, in which they find abun- 

 dance of minute shell-fish, that constitute their usual food. In such situations, 

 collected in immense flocks, whose evolutions upon the wing are curious and 

 very beautiful, they reside till the latter part of April or the beginning of May, 

 when they again depart to the Arctic regions for the purposes of incubation 

 and of rearing their young. Their polar migration extends to very high lati- 

 tudes, as the Knot is enumerated by voyagers as inhabiting the icy shores of 

 Greenland and Spitzbergen. 



When searching for food, the knot sandpiper tracks the flow and recession 

 of the waves along the beach with great nimbleness, wading and searching 

 among the loose sand for its favourite food, which consists of the small, thin, 

 oval, bivalve shell-fish, of a white or pearl colour, and not larger than the pips 



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