WATER BIRDS. 189 
102. Sanderling. Calidris leucophea (Pallas). (248) 
Synonyms: Beach Bird, Surf Snipe, White Snipe—Tringa leucophea, Pall., 1764.— 
Tringa arenaria, Linn., 1766.—Calidris arenaria of most authors. 
The only Beach Bird of its size with but three toes—the hind toe lacking. 
It is also probably the palest or whitest of the sandpipers, young birds and 
adults in the fall being pure white below, and white, speckled thinly with 
darker, above. In flight the compact flocks, light bodies, dark wings, and 
conspicuous white wing-bars, are good recognition marks. 
Distribution.—Nearly cosmopolitan, breeding in the Arctic and sub- 
Arctic regions, migrating, in America, south to Chili and Patagonia. 
This seems to be a rather common species along the shores of the Great 
Lakes during migration, but is seldom met with in the interior. Dr. Gibbs 
states that so far as he knows it has never been taken in Kalamazoo county. 
Mr. Newell A. Eddy has found it abundant some years on the shores of 
Saginaw Bay. He took a dozen or more October 3, 1890, and found it 
abundant again Sept. 26, 1896. Leon J. Cole calls it an abundant fall 
migrant along the shore of Lake Michigan at Grand Haven, and Major 
Boies observed it on the east shore of Neebish Island in the spring of 1893. 
The only record which I have been able to find for any point not on the 
shore of the Great Lakes is a record of four seen at Ann Arbor, August 26, 
1899, by Chas. L. Cass. A very late record is that of a male taken by 
Hirzel at Forestville, Sanilac county, November 24, 1903, and now in the 
Agricultural College Museum. 
This is a typical beach species and is usually seen feeding at the very 
edge of the water, following the retreating waves and picking up particles 
of food, in Michigan mainly insects, left by the water. It rarely visits the 
upper parts of the beach, and still more rarely, if at all, the grassy or muddy 
ponds inland. In flight the members of the flock keep close together, yet 
always preserve about the same distance, and they act practically like a 
single bird, all rising and falling, turning to right or left, wheeling or alight- 
ing with the utmost uniformity and precision. Ordinarily they are one of 
the least suspicious of the shore birds and may be approached very closely 
while feeding. 
They nest only in the far north and their eggs have been taken only a few 
times. The nest is placed on the ground and sometimes at a considerable 
distance from the water, which is surprising in a species which ordinarily 
loves to have its feet wet all the time. The eggs are three or four, light 
olive-brown, spotted and speckled with darker, and average 1.41 by .91 
inches. 
According to Elliot “its food consists of minute mollusca, crustacea, 
worms, insects, and in the far north it has been observed to eat the buds 
of saxifrage” (North Am. Shore Birds, 1895, 102, 103). 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
Toes three in front, no trace of a hind toe. Bill about as long as head, slender, straight 
black. Adult in summer: Upper parts pale rusty with numerous black spots and many 
feathers tipped with white; under parts mainly white, the throat and breast washed with 
rusty and finely speckled and lined with blackish; a conspicuous white wing-band formed 
by tips of greater coverts; basal parts of inner primaries also white, the outer webs and tips 
of all blackish, the shafts white. Adult in spring: Top of head, occiput, back and 
scapulars, black, coarsely mottled with grayish white, often some feathers showing rusty 
edgings; back of neck grayish white, more or less striped with pale brown; entire under 
parts spotless white, the throat and chest often shaded lightly with pale rust-red. Some 
