to 
pan 
or 
WATER BIRDS. 
117. Ring-necked Plover. Agialitis semipalmata (Bonap.). (274) 
ae bedaths A pene . : , : : 
Synonyms: Semipalmated Plover, Ring-neck, Ring Plover, Beach Bird.—Charadrius 
, 
semipalmatus, Bonap., 1825.—ANgialitis semipalmatus, Cab., 1856, and authors generally. 
—Tringa hiaticula, Wils. ‘ 
Figure 58. 
A small plover readily known by its grayish brown back and the com- 
plete white collar above a similar black one of about the same width. 
Distribution.—Arctie and Subarctic America, migrating south throughout 
tropical America, as far as Brazil, Peru and the Galapagos. 
A common bird of the lake shores in spring and again in late summer, 
and regularly, though less often, seen along the shores of streams and 
about mud flats in the interior of the state. It 
arrives from the south during May, lingers until after 
the first of June (sometimes until after the middle) 
goes north to breed, and is back again by the middle 
of July, remaining here and there through August 
and September. Sometimes it is seen in pairs or 
even singly, but usually it appears in small flocks of 
six to thirty individuals, and these feed and fly 
together, seemingly unwilling to be separated even for ae. ; 
a moment. Pie oun alleys 
Unlike most of our plover this species seems to be un- Handbook of CERO 
happy away from water, and I do not remember ever Mifflin & Co. 
to have met with it except along the water’s edge. It 
associates commonly with sandpipers and other shore birds and we have 
found it in Ingham county almost always with the Least Sandpiper and 
the Semipalmated. In Nebraska, however, it must frequent the prairies 
as well as the margins of ponds and streams, for Professor Aughey found 
it feeding freely on the Rocky Mountain locust in 1865, 1874 and 1875, 
and every stomach examined in those years contained large numbers of 
these locusts, with comparatively few other insects; the average number 
of locusts in each stomach was fifty-three (Ist Rep. U.S. Entom. Com., 
App. 2, p. 49). 
There is no likelihood at all that it ever nests within our limits, and it is 
not possible that the birds which leave us late in June are the same which 
return by the middle of July; on the contrary, it is probable that those which 
return to us éarliest are the ones which went north early in May, while 
those which linger with us until June do not reappear until September. 
This, however, is mainly conjecture. 
It nests in the far north, and a nest described by Hifrig (Auk, XXII, 
1905, 239) was found at Fullerton, on Hudson Bay, July 1, 1904, and was 
a mere hollow in the sand without any lining whatever. It contained four 
eges which were “light brown with a slight green tinge and numerous 
roundish blackish umber and lilac spots and dots.” According to Ridgway 
the eggs measure about 1.26 by .94 inches. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
Forehead white, bordered behind by a black bar across the 
and nape grayish brown; chin, throat, ring round neck, 
across the upper breast, extending back- 
and upper surface of wings and 
Adult male in summer: 1 
crown; remainder of crown, occiput, 
and most of under parts pure white; a black band 
ward almost around the neck, but seldom complete; back 
