SCOLOPACID^E. 429 



amongst heather or long grass, generally nearly on 

 a level with, and not far from, the sea; but it is 

 occasionally placed much higher, indeed at several 

 hundred feet above the sea.* 



The variations in the plumage of the Dunlin have 

 led to some little confusion, Bewick calling the bird 

 in its summer plumage the Dunlin (Tringa alpina of 

 of Linnaeus) and in the winter plumage the Purre 

 (T.-cindus of Linnseus). Montagu appears to have 

 fallen into the same error, but to have corrected it in 

 the appendix to his * Ornithological Dictionary.' 



The winter plumage is as follows : The beak is 

 black : irides black ; the head, neck, back and 

 scapulars uniform ash-gre}% with black shafts to the 

 feathers ; the wing-coverts are dark dusky in the 

 centre, broadty margined with ash-grey ; the greater 

 coverts of primaries black, some of them slightly 

 tipped with white ; greater coverts of secondaries 

 dusky, tipped and slightly edged with white ; pri- 

 maries dark dusky, shafts white, and a patch of 

 white on the outer web of all but the first four this, 

 with the white tips of the coverts of the secondaries, 

 makes a white bar on the open wing ; the tertials are 

 ash-grey ; the rump and central tail-coverts darker 

 than the back ; the outer tail-coverts white ; the 

 tail-feathers are very pale ash-grey, except the two 

 centre ones, which are dusky ; the chin is white ; 



* See ' Zoologist' for 1806 (Second Series, p. 513). 



