452 SANDPIPERS AND RELATED SPECIES 



being much longer than the beak dark rump, white, unbarred, upper tail- 

 coverts, and the wholly black terminal portion of the tail. There is a more or 

 less complete seasonal change of coloration, and the sexes are alike. (PI. 125.) 

 Length 16 in. [406*40 mm.]. In the nuptial dress, which, like that of the green- 

 shank, is never completed, the head and neck are of a dull bay, the crown 

 heavily, the neck slightly, striated with dark brown. The mantle presents an 

 admixture of dark ash-grey feathers and black bay-fringed feathers, the former 

 belonging to the " winter dress," and retained till the autumn moult. More or 

 fewer of the hinder scapulars and inner secondaries are black, with bay-coloured, 

 serrated margins, or more or less completely barred with bay. The lower back 

 is of a dark ash-grey, the upper tail-coverts white. The tail feathers have the 

 basal half white, the rest black ; on the outer feathers, however, the white area 

 is increased, so that in the outspread tail the black terminal portion assumes a 

 wedge shape. The wing-coverts are ash-grey, with paler margins, save the major 

 coverts which are broadly tipped with white. The primaries are black, the innermost 

 with white bases, the white forming a bar in the extended wing continuous with 

 that of the major coverts of the secondaries. The secondaries have white bases, 

 which on the innermost quills extend downwards so as to appear beyond the 

 free edge of the major coverts ; thus the inner secondaries appear white, with a 

 black bar across their tips. The throat is white, but the neck and fore-breast 

 and anterior flank feathers are bay-coloured. The fore-breast and flank feathers 

 are tipped with black, many are white, only the terminal portion being suffused 

 with bay and tipped with black. The lower breast and abdomen and under tail- 

 coverts are white. After the autumn moult the bay colour disappears ; the colora- 

 tion resembles that of the bar-tailed species, the upper parts being of an ash-grey, 

 but the dark striations and white edges to the feathers are wanting. The wings, 

 lower back, and tail are unchanged. The juvenile plumage resembles that of the 

 adults in summer, inasmuch as the plumage is of an ash-grey above suffused on 

 the head, neck, breast, and flanks with buff. After the autumn moult dark striations 

 appear on the upper parts, and bars across many of the feathers of the under parts. 

 The young in down are of a dull yellow, and show more or less distinct longitudinal 

 lines down the head and back. [w. P. P.] 



2. Distribution. This species no longer breeds in the British Isles, but 

 formerly nested in the fen districts from South Yorkshire to East Anglia. In 

 Yorkshire it became extinct early in the nineteenth century, but survived in 

 Lincolnshire, Huntingdon, and Cambridgeshire up to 1829, while a single instance 



