12 CHARADRIUS PLUVIALIS. 



gated with blackish spots. They usually fly in small 

 flocks, and have a shrill whistling note. They are 

 very frequent in Siberia, where they likewise breed ; 

 extend also to Kamtschatka, and as far south as the 

 Sandwich Isles. In this latter place, Mr Pennant 

 remarks, " they are very small." 



Although these birds are occasionally found along 

 our sea coast, from Georgia to Maine, yet they are no 

 where numerous ; and I have never met with them in 

 the interior. Our mountains being generally covered 

 with forest, and no species of heath having, as yet, been 

 discovered within the boundaries of the United States, 

 these birds are probably induced to seek the more 

 remote arctic regions of the continent to breed and 

 rear their young in, where the country is more open, 

 and unencumbered with woods. 



The golden plover is ten inches and a half long, and 

 twenty-one inches in extent; bill, short, of a dusky 

 slate colour; eye, very large, blue black; nostrils, 

 placed in a deep furrow, and half covered with a pro- 

 minent membrane ; whole upper parts, black, thickly 

 marked with roundish spots of various tints of golden 

 yellow; wing-coverts and hind part of the neck, pale 

 brown, the latter streaked with yellowish; front, broad 

 line over the eye, chin and sides of the same, yellowish 

 white, streaked with small pointed spots of bro\vn 

 olive; breast, grey, with olive and white ; sides, under 

 the wings, marked thinly with transverse bars of pale 

 olive; belly and vent, white; wing-quills, Mark, the 

 middle of the shafts marked with white ; greater 

 coverts, black, tipt with white ; tail, rounded, black, 

 barred with triangular spots of golden yellow ; 

 dark dusky slate ; feet, three-toed, with generally the 

 slight rudiments of a heel, the outer toe connected as 

 far as the first joint with the middle one. The male 

 and female differ very little in colour. 



