674 THE WANDERING TATTLER. 
No. 273. 
WANDERING TATTLER. 
A. O. U. No. 259. Heteractitis incanus (Gmel.). 
Description.—Adult in summer: Above uniform dark plumbeous, or slaty 
gray; a white superciliary; shaft of first primary chiefly white; underparts basally 
white, heavily shaded or barred across upper breast and on sides with color of 
back; axillars and wing-linings, likewise, plumbeous; fore-neck heavily speckled 
and remaining underparts barred with plumbeous dusky. Adults in winter: 
Similar but more extensively white below; leaden-gray admixture everywhere 
blended, heaviest on cheeks and sides of breast. /mmature: Like adult in winter, 
but scapulars, tertials, and upper tail-coverts indistinctly spotted with white, and 
sides faintly mottled with white. Length about 11.00 (279.4); wing 6.75 (171.5); 
tail 3.00 (76.2); bill 1.55 (309.4); tarsus 1.30 (33). 
Recognition Marks.—Robin size; Killdeer size; leaden gray coloration dis- 
tinctive; few tew notes; frequents rocky shores. 
Nest and Eggs unknown. 
General Range.—lacific coast of America, from Norton Sound, Alaska, to 
the Galapagos, and west to Kamchatka and Hawaiian Islands; also the more 
eastern island groups of Polynesia. 
Range in Washington.—Regular migrant and possibly summer resident on 
the West Coast (Cape Elizabeth, July 14, 1906). 
Authorities.—Heteroscelus brevipes (Vieill.) Baird, Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. 
Surv. IX. 1858, p. 735. C&S. 
Specimens.—l’ roy. C. D. 
TO christen a bird “wandering” is to make all bird-men god fathers in in- 
terest; for what about any bird more captivates the imagination than its dispo- 
sition, and ability, to wander? This Tattler should be the patron saint and 
emblem of all who love the wild, and especially of those who, having once been 
upon the bosom of the broad Pacific, feel evermore the ebb and flow of salt 
water in their veins. Attu, Shamshu, Baranoff, Laysan, Marcus Island, 
Odgovigamut—these are all the same to H. incanus. His grip is always 
packed and his ticket always purchased for whatever clime, rock, or strand he 
takes a fancy to. Nor need he travel all alone. ‘‘What say, dear, shall it be the 
Shumagins this summer? or a little cabin on the Tschuktschi?” There is a pro- 
posal a /a mode for you, and the heart grows faint with desire to follow. 
The Wandering Tattler is known to summer in Alaska, and is supposed to 
breed in the vicinity of interior lakes and streams, but its nest has not yet been 
taken. During migrations the bird touches only the seacoast, visiting us in 
May and returning sometimes as early as July. It haunts the barnacle-covered 
rocks and tide-swept reefs, and itself appears but a detached fragment of their 
