Snipe, Sandpipers, etc. 



trickle of large drops falling rapidly into a partly filled vessel." 

 Three or four precocious chicks, that have emerged from pale 

 bluish white or buff shells heavily marked with chocolate, run 

 about the tundra with their still devoted parents in June, and are 

 able to fly expertly in July, when the first migrants reach our 

 shores. 



Sanderling 



(Calidris arenaria) 



Called also: SURF SNIPE; RUDDY PLOVER; BEACH BIRD 



Length — 7 to 8 inches. 



Male and Female — In summer: Upper parts varied blackish 

 brown, reddish chestnut, and grayish white, most feathers 

 tipped with the latter; wing coverts ashy brown, broadly 

 tipped with white, making a bar across wings; tail brownish 

 gray, margined with white, the outer feathers nearly white; 

 throat and breast washed with pale cinnamon and spotted 

 with blackish; other under parts, immaculate white. Bill, 

 about as long as head, stout, straight, black; broader at the 

 tip than at its slightly concave centre. Feet with three 

 toes only; no hind toe; scales of tarsus transverse. In 

 ■winter : The chestnut in upper plumage replaced by gray, or 

 mixed with brown and gray in the spring; under parts pure 

 white. Immature birds in autumn lack the chestnut tint 

 and are more evenly mottled; brownish ash or blackish and 

 white above, pure white below; rarely with a spot on breast. 



Range — Nearly cosmopolitan, nesting in the Arctic regions or 

 near them; south in winter as far as Chile and Patagonia. 



Season — Spring and autumn visitor; March to June; September, 

 October. 



Commonest of the beach birds everywhere, the sanderlings 

 — for it is impossible to think of them except in flocks — run 

 about like a company of busy ants on our coast and sometimes 

 inland too, near large bodies of water that are followed in the 

 migrations. Gleaning from the sand fiats with an eagerness 

 suggesting starvation, their heads pushed forward, alert, nimble- 

 footed, nervously quick in every movement, the birds' every 

 energy while with us appears to be concentrated on the business 

 of picking up a living as if they never expected to see food again. 



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