SANDERLING PLOVER. 73 



picking up its food from the sand amid the roar of the 

 ocean. It flies in numerous flocks, keeping a low, 

 meandering course along the ridges of the tumbling 

 surf. On alighting, the whole scatter about after the 

 receding wave, busily picking up those minute bivalves 

 already described. As the succeeding wave returns, it 

 bears the whole of them before it in one crowded line ; 

 then is the moment seized by the experienced gunner 

 to sweep them in flank with his destructive shot. The 

 flying survivors, after a few aerial meanders, agaiu 

 alight, and pursue their usual avocation as busily and 

 as unconcernedly as before. These birds are most 

 numerous on extensive sandy beaches in front of the 

 ocean. Among rocks, marshes, or stones covered with 

 sea-weed, they seldom make their appearance. 



The sanderling is eight inches long, and fourteen 

 inches in extent $ the bill is black, an inch and a 

 quarter in length, slender, straight, fluted along the 

 upper mandible, and exactly formed like that of the 

 sandpiper ; the head, neck above, back, scapulars, and 

 tertials, are gray white ; the shafts, blackish, and the 

 webs tinged with brownish ash ; shoulder of the wing, 

 black ; greater coverts, broadly tipt with white ; quills, 

 black, crossed with a transverse band of white ; the tail 

 extends a little beyond the wings, and is of a grayish 

 ash colour, edged with white, the two middle feathers 

 being about half an inch longer than the others ; eye, 

 dark hazel ; whole lower parts of the plumage, pure 

 white ; legs and naked part of the thighs, black ; feet, 

 three-toed, each divided to its origin, and bordered with 

 a narrow membrane. 



Such are the most common markings of this bird, 

 both of males and females, particularly during the 

 winter ; but many others occur among them, early in 

 the autumn, thickly marked or spotted with black 

 on the crown, back, scapulars, and tertials, so as to 

 appear much mottled, having as much black as white 

 on those parts. In many of these I have observed the 

 plain gray plumage coming out about the middle of 



