SPECIES 4. TRINGA SEMIPALMATA. 

 SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. 



[Plate LXIIL Fig. 4.] 

 PEALE'S Museum, No. 4023. 



THIS is one of the smallest of its tribe; and seems to have 

 been entirely overlooked, or confounded with another which 

 it much resembles ( Tringa pusilla^) and with whom it is often 

 found associated. 



Its half-webbed feet, however, are sufficient marks of dis- 

 tinction between the two. It arrives and departs with the pre- 

 ceding species; flies in flocks with the Stints, Purres, and a 

 few others; and is sometimes seen at a considerable distance 

 from the sea, on the sandy shores of our fresh water lakes. On 

 the twenty-third of September, I met with a small flock of these 

 birds in Burlington bay, on lake Champlain. They are numerous 

 along the seashores of New Jersey; but retire to the south on 

 the approach of cold weather. 



This species is six inches long, and twelve in extent; the bill 

 is black, an inch long, and very slightly bent; crown and body 

 above dusky brown, the plumage edged with ferruginous, and 

 tipt with white; tail and wings nearly of a length; sides of the 

 rump white; rump and tail-coverts black; wing quills dusky 

 black, shafted and banded with white, much in the manner of 

 the Least Snipe; over the eye a line of white; lesser coverts tipt 

 with white; legs and feet blackish ash, the latter half-webbed. 

 Males and females alike in colour. 



These birds varied greatly in their size, some being scarcely 

 five inches and a half in length, and the bill not more than three 

 quarters; others measured nearly seven inches in the whole 

 length, and the bill upwards of an inch. In their general ap- 



