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418 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
ous spots and blotches of dark-brown, chiefly at their greater 
end. They vary in dimensions from 1.65 by 1.10 inch to 
1.50 by 1.08 inch; but one brood is reared in the season. 
AAGIALITIS WILSONIUS. —( Ord.) Cassin. 
Wilson’s Plover; Ring-neck. 
Charadrius Wilsonius, Ord. Ed. Wils. Orn., IV. (1825) 77. Nutt. Man., II. 
(1834) 21. Aud. Orn. Biog., III. (1885) 73; V. (1839) 577. Jb., Birds Am., V. 
(1842) 214. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Smaller than the preceding; bill rather long and robust. 
Male. — Front, and stripe over the eye, and entire under parts, white; front with 
a second band of black above the white band; stripe from the base of the bill to the 
eye and wide transverse band on the breast, brownish-black; upper parts of head 
and body light ashy-brown, with the feathers frequently edged and tipped with pale- 
ashy; back of the neck encircled with a ring of white, edged above with fine light- 
reddish; quills brown, with white shafts; shorter coverts tipped with white; outer 
feathers of the tail white, middle feathers dark-brown; bill black; legs yellow. 
Female. — Without the band of black in front, and with the pectoral band dull- 
reddish and light ashy-brown; iris reddish-brown. « 
Total length, seven and three quarter inches; wing, four and a half inches; ‘tail, 
two inches. 
Hab. — Middle and Southern States on the Atlantic, and the same coast of South 
America. 
This species is found in New England only as a somewhat 
rare visitor in the autumn, after it has reared its young in a 
more southern locality. I think that it seldom passes north 
of the southern coast of Cape Cod; but it is thete occa- 
sionally seen in the early part of September, gleaning its 
food of animalcule and small shell-fish and insects on the 
sandy beach of the ocean. 
The Wilson’s Plover is more southern in its habits than 
either of the succeeding species; but it breeds abundantly 
on the seacoast of New Jersey. The nest is nothing but a 
hollow scratched in the sand, above high-water mark, with 
a few bits of seaweed or grass for its lining. The eggs are 
laid about the first week in June. They are, like those 
of the other Waders, pyriform in shape; and, when placed 
in the nest, their small ends are together in the middle of 
the nest. They almost exactly resemble the eggs of the 
