118 MANUAL OF PHILIPPINE BIRDS. 
thickly mottled with spots and bars of brown; upper tail-coverts barred 
with brown and whitish, the bin bars somewhat irregular and not 
coterminous; tail ashy brown, tipped with white, and crossed by regular 
bars of dark brown, about nine in number; center of crown whitish and 
streaked with brown, remainder of crown dark brown, forming two broad 
bands and followed by a broad eyebrow of dull white and narrowly streaked 
with small lines of blackish; lores and upper margins of ear-coverts dark 
brown; remainder of sides of face and neck pale brown, streaked with 
darker brown, cheeks somewhat whiter; chin and upper throat white, 
with scarcely any brown spots; lower throat, breast, and sides of body 
pale, rufescent buff, thickly clouded with longitudinal streaks of dark 
brown on throat and breast; dark brown bars of a more or less sagittate 
shape on sides of body and flanks; abdomen and under tail-coverts white, 
the latter with streaks and bars of dark brown; under wing-coverts and 
axillars white with broad dusky brown bars, very distinct on the latter. 
‘Bill blackish, dark brown at base of lower mandible; feet dark lead-color ; 
claws black; iris very dark brown.’ (Vaczanowski.) Length, 380; cul- 
men, 76; wing, 223; tail, 96; tarsus, 55. 
“Adult female in breeding plumage.—Similar to the male. 
“Young birds may always be distinguished by the more mottled ap- 
pearance of upper surface, most of the feathers being spotted on both 
webs with whitish or pale, rufescent buff; lower back and rump plentifully 
mottled with spots of dusky brown, and innermost secondaries very dis- 
tinctly notched with rufescent buff; streaks on throat and breast and bars 
on flanks almost as plentifully developed as in the adult; bars on axillars 
often very incomplete, and, in rare instances, absent. 
“The differences between this race and the whimbrel (V. pheopus) 
of Europe are not so strongly pronounced in all cases as to render the 
determination of specimens always a matter of certainty. Some of the 
Philippine specimens, for instance, are very difficult to separate from 
European examples, and many others also appear to be intermediate be- 
tween the two forms.” (Sharpe.) 
The above descriptions of the adult male and of the young are slightly 
modified from Sharpe’s descriptions of Numenius pheopus of which the 
eastern whimbrel is but a subspecies. 
The eastern whimbrel is much smaller than either of the two preced- 
ing species and usually it may be killed with little trouble. In the 
vicinity of tide-flats at high water it often congregates in flocks, but as 
the feeding grounds become exposed the individuals scatter to various 
parts following the receding tide. In length the male is about 420; wing, 
205; tail, 100; exposed culmen, 82; tarsus, 53; middle toe with claw, 41. 
Wing of female, 240; tail, 110; exposed culmen, 79; tarsus, 60. 
