GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 263 



the Volga, across Turkestan, the eastern coasts of Siberia, North 

 China, Japan, and both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North 

 America on migration ; and winters in the basin of the Medi- 

 terranean, North Africa (to the Canaries in the west and Zanzibar 

 in the east), the basin of the Caspian, the Mekran coast, occa- 

 sionally Northern India, South China, Formosa, Borneo, Java, 

 the Southern States of America, and the West Indies. 



Allied Forms. — American ornithologists have separated sub- 

 specifically the Dunlins of that continent from those of the Old 

 World, under the name of Tringa alpina pacifica, on the ground 

 of their being larger and more rufous in breeding plumage ; but 

 as the differences are so trivial and so completely intergrade, it 

 seems wisest, at any rate for the purposes of the present work, to 

 treat the two races as one.* The Dunlin has probably no other 

 ally closer than the Purple Sandpiper, a British species dealt with 

 elsewhere. 



Time during which the Dunlin may be taken.— 



August I St to March ist. 



Habits. — Of all our small Waders the Dunlin is the most 

 widely distributed, the most numerous, and the best known. It 

 is more or less gregarious at all times, some of the flocks in 

 autumn and winter being composed of thousands of birds, whilst 

 even in the breeding season parties of varying size regularly con- 

 gregate at the feeding places. It is also a social species too, and 

 not only joins flocks of other small Sandpipers, but allows many 

 other odd birds to live in flocks of its own kind. Its haunts vary 

 a good deal with the season : in autumn and winter the bird 

 principally frequents mud-flats, estuaries, and salt marshes, not 

 showing much propensity for sands unless mud-banks are near 

 them ; whilst in summer the old birds retire more or less inland 

 to swampy moors and marshes for the purpose of rearing their 

 young. A great many Dunlins simply pass along our coasts 

 in autumn and spring (in September and May) from and to their 

 Arctic haunts, but vast numbers also stay upon them throughout 

 the winter. The Dunlin chiefly migrates down coast lines, but a 



* Some naturalists assert that two races of Dunlin frequent the British 

 Islands, one small and bright-coloured, the other large and not so vivid ; but 

 nothing satisfactory seems yet to have been determined. 



