SHORE BIRDS OF NOVA SCOTIA — GILPIN. 877 



shores. They are generally in imperfect moult, having lost their 

 nuptial plumage, which is not yet replaced by their winter one. 

 Few full plumaged males appear, but females, imperfect males 

 and young. Hence the difficulty of classing them. The pursuit 

 of food alone urges them on their migration southward, whilst 

 that of reproduction swept them onward in the spring to the 

 fierce North. The spring route is more direct, more inland, and 

 more quick. We see nothing of them during spring. The most 

 obvious, and those which from numbers and from sight most 

 modify our landscape, are the sand peeps (sand pipers, tringa), 

 and next them the ring necks (the plover). These two speck 

 the feathery margins of our salt-estuaries, whitening our flats 

 and flashing like silver clouds in the air. Next in number come 

 the larger plover, golden plover and beetle heads, which migrate 

 in sufficient numbers to modify our landscape. The other species 

 must be looked for by the naturalist, and from their numbers 

 are scarcely noticed, save by the sportsman, or naturalist, and 

 yet in their aggregate great numbers pass us. I have thought 

 the members of the Institute would be interested in a description 

 and classification of all these birds, the numerous as well as the 

 more rare, and therefore in this paper shall give only what I 

 have seen personally myself, of all the various shore birds that 

 pass our shores during the autumn. I do not doubt that some 

 have evaded my notice, or that I have found a difficulty in classi- 

 fication in others, yet the work of an eye-witness is always valu- 

 able. I shall use the Smithsonian nomenclature (Dr. Coues), 

 thinking it the best, but finding some difficulty even in it, to say 

 nothing of Nuttal, Wilson, and the older naturalists, in properly 

 arranging all my species. Of the vast flocks which, as I said be- 

 fore, modify our landscape, I have found from a study of years, 

 from minute measurements and accurate coloured drawings, 

 that they are composed of two species of ring neck plover, and 

 three distinct of sand peeps, or sand pipers, all in common in 

 huge flocks. 



The ring necks are the American ringed plover, M semipal- 

 matus, and M melodus, piping plover. Of the sand peeps, with 

 the utmost study, I have only found three species, the less sand 



