BIRDS. 103 



upper mandible on each. side. Featliers of the crown have dark centers, producing a streaked 

 appearance. Edges of feathers of back and wing coverts, including the tertials and secondaries, 

 have light borders. These edgings are gray on the back and narrow, but are broader and become 

 white on the tips of secondaries ; rump grayish white, each feather edged with a subterminal dark 

 band. Tail pure ashy, tipped with a slightly darker border followed by a fine white edging. Sides 

 of the head, neck, and the under side of the throat and neck dull grayish ashy, thickly streaked 

 with a-narrow dark shaft-line on each feather. The grayish becomes darkest on the breast, where 

 the streaking changes to white in the center with a grayish border, the division between the two 

 colors being marked by a fine dark line inclosing the white. Abdomen grayish white ; sides of 

 flanks pale fulvous ashy, transversely barred with vermiculated lines formed by the broken and 

 irregular markings of the feathers. 



Tringa couesi (Eidgw.). Aleutian Sandpiper (Esk. T^naigM). 



One of the most intereetiug results of the recent investigations into the zoology of Alaska is 

 the determination of this and the following species. They appear to be among the most narrowly 

 limited of waders in their range, and are, like a number of other species, peculiar to this region, 

 the product of the strange and unusual surroundings. 



Since the naturalists of the Eussian-American Telegraph Expedition entered the country, until 

 the present day, the species forming the subject of this article has been under observation. At 

 first it was supposed to be identical with its relative, the common Purple Sandpiper of the Atlantic 

 and portions of the Arctic coasts of the two continents. JSTordenskjold found the latter species 

 scattered over the north coast of Europe and Asia in his famous voyage, but his record of T. 

 maritima, from the region of Bering Straits, where he wintered, must be referred to couesi, 

 according to our knowledge of the latter's_ distribution. This bird was confused in Mr. Dall's paper 

 with T. maritima, where he gives some interesting notes on its distribution. He found a single 

 specimen of A. couesi near Iifulato, and another at Pastolik, and tells us that Bischoft' found it 

 abundantly at Sitka and at Plover Bay, Siberia. From Pallas's description of his Kurile Island 

 T. arquatella it seems very certain that he referred to the bird now known as A. couesi, as Mr. 

 Eidgway has already pointed out. (See Bull. K. O. C, July, 1880, p. 160.) 



Steller also noted this bird upon the Bering Islands, as Pallas affirms {loc. cit.). In case this 

 is true we have an additional record, which must undoubtedly be referred to this bird, for the 

 " T. maritima" found by Nordenskj old at his winter quarters, just northwest of Bering Straits, 

 undoubtedly agrees with those found directly south on the coast of Siberia, at Plover Bay, and 

 beyond to the Kurile Islands. 



There are some curious facts regarding the breeding range of this bird which are at present 

 unaccountable. It nests throughout the Aleutian chain, from the westernmost island east to 

 the Shumagin group, south of Aliaska. Beyond this we have no knowledge of it at this season. 

 On May 15, 1877, I visited Sanak Island, one of the easternmost of the Aleutians, and first met 

 this bird. A pair were found feeding on a series of bare, jagged rocks, over which the spray flew 

 in a dense cloud as every wave beat at the foot of the rocky shore. I shot one of them and the 

 survivor merely flew up and stood eying me silently from the top of a low clrff 20 or 25 feet over- 

 head, until it, too, fell a victim. Later in the day another was seen near the border of a small 

 lake in the interior of the island. It ran nimbly on before me, over the mossy hillocks, stopping 

 every few feet and half turning to watch my movements, just as a Spotted Sandpiper would do 

 under the circumstances. When driven to take wing, it flew a short distance, with the same ijeculiar 

 down-curved wings and style of flight as has the Spotted Sandpiper. While on the wing it uttered 

 a rather low, but clear and musical ttceo-tweo-tweo. When feeding it had a note something like a 

 call of the Golaptes auratus, and which may be represented by the syallables clu-clU-clu. 



From this time until the 1st of August I did not meet this bird again, and meanwhile I had 

 gone further north to Saint Michaels, on Norton Sound. Early in August, however, I was pleased 

 to find it abundant in parties of from five to thirty or forty about outlying rocky islets and along 

 rugged portions of the shore. During each of the four succeeding seasons the same experience 



