116 BRITISH SEA BIRDS. 
not only in the Arctic regions of both hemispheres, 
but in many temperate latitudes of the same; in 
winter it is dispersed over North Africa, Southern 
Asia, the Southern States of America, and the 
West Indies. At Heligoland, flocks of Dunlins 
invariably indicate bad weather. 
PURPLE SANDPIPER. 
This species, the 77zxga marztima of Brunnich and 
most modern naturalists, but erroneously identified 
with the Z. strvzata of Linnzeus, by certain recent 
writers on ornithology, is a fairly common and widely 
distributed bird on the British coasts during autumn 
and winter. The fact that a few odd birds are 
sometimes met with on our shores during the 
summer, has led to the supposition—totally unsub- 
stantiated as yet—that the Purple Sandpiper may 
breed here. During some years this species is 
much more abundant than others, a fact perhaps 
due to exceptionally favourable breeding seasons. 
The Purple Sandpiper, readily distinguished from 
all other British Limicole by its nearly black rump 
and upper tail coverts, the purple gloss of its 
upper plumage, and its yellow legs—makes its 
appearance with us early in September, and continues 
to arrive in increasing numbers during that month 
and October, and leaves us by the following May. 
This Sandpiper is most partial to a rocky coast, 
where the huge boulders shelve down into the water, 
and large masses of rock and shingle are exposed 
