THE SANDERLING. 171 



GENUS LXXXII ARENARIA (SANDERLING). 



SPECIES 163 THE SANDERLING. 



Arenaria calidris. Selby. 



Sanderling variable. Temm. 



Sea-lark. 



THIS plainly attired little sea-lark has caused considerable 

 confusion to ornithologists, by their placing it in differently 

 allied genera, and as hastily removing it, until allowed the 

 specific honour of a genus to itself. 



Restricted to a single species, the sanderling is found in 

 Europe, Africa, and America, and in our own island. Its oc- 

 currence, although not actually rare, is yet in such paucity of 

 numbers as compared with the common sea -larks (as all the 

 different species comprising dunlins, knots, and redshanks, 

 are best known by the frequenters of the sea-shore), that it 

 might be classed as an unusual visitant. 



Frequenting, as the name indicates, the immediate vicinity 

 of the sand, they are seldom observed, like the other birds, in 

 the neighbourhood of the ooze and muddy banks which many 

 of these species delight to frequent. 



The peculiar pale gray colour which distinguishes the spe- 

 cies in the usual plumage obtained upon our coasts might 

 induce the young ornithologist, meeting it for the first time, 

 to believe it was the nearly similarly attired phalarope which 

 greeted his view. 



Pleasing in its habits, the observance of a flock has been 

 a sight which at all times gratified us, and never more than 

 in the autumn of 1852, when the sandy reach between Mala- 

 hide and Baldoyle was covered with several unusually large 

 flocks, dispersed over the surface in scattered pairs : each bird, 

 after standing for a time motionless, would then run some ten 

 or twelve yards and stop with the same instant movement, 

 and again proceed with a certain curious mechanical motion, 

 as if automaton birds, pushed forward by the aid of some 

 hidden machinery. At times some occasional lagger would 

 take wing, and, alighting in the midst of a small community, 

 run with extraordinary rapidity, the wings extended to the 

 utmost over its back. All those beautiful movements are per- 

 formed with the greatest silence, no cry or call-note ever dis- 

 turbing the dignity of the proceeding. 



Like the knot and turnstone, the sanderling is of excessive 

 rarity in its occurrence during summer ; although speci- 

 mens obtained on the Dublin and Wexford coasts have come 

 under our notice. 



Habitat Northern Europe. 



