258 BIRDS or AUSTRAIilA. 



tion unnecessary ; low flat shingly beaches fringing deep bays 

 and inlets of the sea, salt estuaries and spits of land at the 

 extremities of small islands, are its usual places of resort. In 

 Tasmania I observed it in hundreds at Ralph Bay Neck and 

 the adjoining estuary near the mouth of the -Derwent ; and it 

 was equally plentiful at Nepean Bay and other parts of the 

 shores of Kangaroo Island, at the entrance of Spencer's Gulf 

 in South Australia. Agile and elegant in its movements, it 

 trips over the ground with astonishing celerity, following each 

 receding tide in search of such small marine insects as form 

 part of its diet. All the examples procured by myself were 

 in the winter or light-coloured dress, and had I not recently 

 received specimens from South Australia, which exhibit traces 

 of red on the breast and dark feathers on the upper surface, I 

 should have been led to suppose that it did not undergo the 

 usual changes of the other members of the genus. 



Gilbert found it breeding on the Houtmann's Abrolhos in 

 December, its two eggs being deposited in a hollow, which it 

 had formed in the ridge of black deposit and salt thrown up 

 by the ripple of the water, and which, when the water receded, 

 was left high and dry at about four or five yards from the 

 water's edge. Gilbert also states that it assembles in large 

 flocks on all the lakes around Perth and on Rottnest Island, 

 that it utters a weak piping note when on the wing, that its 

 stomach is muscular, and that its food consists of small land 

 and aquatic insects and small mollusca. He further observes, 

 that at Port Essington it congregates in flocks of several 

 hundreds, and, like the Greenshank and other members of the 

 group, perches on the mangroves during the height of the 

 flood-tide. 



In summer the crown of the head and upper surface is 

 greyish brown, with a patch of blackish brown in the centre 

 of each feather, deepening into rusty red on the margins of the 

 scapularies, with a shght wash of rufous ; wing-coverts tipped 

 with white ; primaries blackish brown with white shafts ; 



