482 ASH-COLORED SANDPIPER. 
the Woodpeckers, will remain searching in the same place, tossing 
the stones and pebbles from side to side for a considerable time. 
These birds vary greatly in color; scarcely two individuals are to 
be-found alike in markings. ‘These varieties are most numerous in 
autumn, when the young birds are about, and are less frequently met 
with in spring. The most perfect specimens I have examined are as 
follows: — ; 
Length, eight inches and a half; extent, seventeen inches; bill, 
blackish horn; frontlet, space passing through the eyes, and thence 
dropping down and joining the under mandible, black, enclosing a spot 
of white. Crown, white, streaked with black; breast, black, from 
whence it turns up half across the neck; behind the eye, a spot of 
black; upper part of the neck, white, running down and skirting the 
black breast as far as the shoulder; upper part of the back, black, di- 
vided by a strip of bright ferruginous ; scapulars, black, glossed with 
greenish, and imterspersed with rusty red; whole back below this, pure 
white, but hid by the scapulars; rump, black; tail-coverts, white ; tail, 
rounded, white at the base half, thence black to the extremity ; belly 
and vent, white ; wings, dark dusky, crossed by two bands of white ; 
lower half of the lesser coverts, ferruginous ; legs and feet, a bright 
vermilion, or red lead; hind toe standing inwards, and all of them 
edged with a thick, warty membrane. The male and female are alike 
variable; and, when in perfect plumage, nearly resemble each other. 
Bewick, in his History of British Birds, has figured and described 
what he considers to be two species of Turnstone; one of which, he 
says, is chiefly confined to the southern, and the other to the northern 
parts of Great Britain. The difference, however, between these two 
appears to be no greater than commonly occurs among individuals of 
the same flock, and evidently of the same species, in this country.. As 
several years probably elapse before these birds arrive at their com- 
plete state. of plumage, many varieties must necessarily appear, ac- 
cording to the different ages of the individuals. 
ASH-COLORED SANDPIPER.—TRINGA CINEREA.—Fie. 224. 
Arct. Zool. p. 414, No. 386.— Bewick, ii. p. 102.— Peale’s Museum, No. 4060. 
TRINGA CANUTUS. — Linnzus. — PLUMAGE OF THE YOUNG,* 
Synonymes of young ; Tringa calidris, Linn. i. 252. — Tringa nevia, Lath. Ind.Orn. 
ii. 732. — Maubeche tachete, Buff. — Freckled Sandpiper, Arct. Zool. ii. p. 480. 
THE regularly-disposed concentric semicircles of white and dark 
brown that mark the upper parts of the plumage of this species, dis- 
* This beautiful Sandpiper has also, from its cnanges, been described under 
various names, and our author has well represented the states of the young and 
summer plumage. in his Ash-colored and Red-breasted Sandpipers. In the winter 
plumage of the adult, the upper parts are of a uniform gray, and want the black 
and light edges, seprasented tn Fig. 225. 
America and Europe seem the only countries of the Knot. I have never seen it 
a 
