ca 
488 RED-BREASTED SNIPE. 
ally a plump, tender, and excellent bird for the table; and, conse- 
quently, brings a good price in markét. 
The Gray-Backs do not breed on the shores of the Middle States. 
Their first appearance is early in May. They remain a few weeks, 
and again disappear until October. They usually keep in small flocks, 
alight in a close body together on the sand flats, where they search for 
the small bivalve shells already described. On the approach of the 
sportsman, they frequently stand fixed and silent for some time; do 
not appear to be easily alarmed, neither do they run about in the 
water as much as some others, or with the same rapidity, but appear 
more tranquil and deliberate. In the month of November, they retire 
to the south. 
This species is ten inches long, and twenty in extent; the bill is 
black, and about an inch and a half long; the chin, eyebrows, and 
whole breast, are a pale brownish orange color; crown, hind head from 
the upper mandible backwards, and neck, dull white, streaked with 
black ; back, a pale slaty olive, the feathers tipped with white, barred 
and spotted with black and pale ferruginous; tail-coverts, white, ele- 
gantly barred with black; wings, plain dusky, black towards the ex- 
tremity ; the greater coverts, tipped with white; shafts of thetprima- 
ries, white ; tail, pale ashy olive, finely edged with white, the two 
middle feathers somewhat the longest; belly and vent, white, the 
latter marked with small arrow-heads of black; legs and feet, black ; 
toes, bordered with a narrow membrane; eye, small and black. 
In some specimens, both of males and females, the red on the breast 
was much paler; in others it descended as far as the thighs. Both 
sexes seemed nearly alike. 
——_—_—}>—— 
RED-BREASTED SNIPE.—SCOLOPAK NOVEBORACENSIS, — 
Fig. 228. 
Arct. Zool. p. 464, No. 368.— Peale’s Museum, No. 3932. 
MACRORHAMPUS GRISEUS. —Leacn.* 
Macrorhampus griseus, Steph. Cont. Shaw’s Zool. vol. xii. p. 61. — Scolopax 
risea, ‘Hem. Br. Zool. p. 106.— Bonap. Cat. p. 27.—Le becassine grise, 
colopax leucophoea, View! Gal. des Ois. pl. 241.— Limosa scolopacea, Say’s 
Exped. to Rocky Mount. i. p. 170, 171, note. — Brown Snipe, Mont. Orn. Dict. 
= Becassine ponetuée, Temm. Man. ii, p. 679.— Brown Snipe, Selby’s Ilust. 
Br. Orn. pl. %, fig. 2. 
Tats bird has a considerable resemblance to the Common Snipe, 
not only in its general form, size, and colors, but likewise in the excel- 
lence of its flesh, which is in high estimation. It differs, however, 
* This bird will stand in the rank of asub-genus. It was first indicated by Leach, 
in the Catalogue to the British Museum, under the above title. It is one of those 
beautifully connecting forms, which it is impossible to place without giving a situa- 
tion to themselves, and intimately connects the Snipes with Totanus and Limosa. 
The bill is truly that of Scolopax, while the plumage and changes ally it to the 
