and color alone, as in the case of the plovers; but Nature has given many of 

 her beach-birds a picturing of the faint patterns. Wave-lines left at low 

 tide on bright sandy beaches, narrowed in perspective, the lines of small 

 lapping rollers over shallows, strips of stranded driftweed, shells, heaped or 

 scattered, straggling blades of beach grass — these, varied by the even speck- 

 ling of broad pebble-beds, are the chief features of the ground-scene on blank 

 shores where sandpipers and plovers troop and feed. So do we find the 

 bird's pattern, wherever it occurs, delicate and linear and wavy, with few in- 

 tricacies, and a persistent tendency toward lengthwise striping and crescentic 

 spots. The effect may be produced by light markings on dark, by dark 

 on light, or by both; but the patterns are all much alike in general character. 

 Marginal bands play the chief part in all these simpler picture-patterns, and 

 this is even truer of the beach than of the grass type. These two phases of pat- 

 tern are well connected by intermediate forms, worn by some of the LimicolcR 

 that live more or less largely in the fields or moorlands. Such are the Cur- 

 lews (Numenius), already mentioned among grass-pattern birds, the Thick- 

 knees (CEdicnemidcE), and the North American Bartram's Sandpiper (Bar- 

 tramia longicauda), which has, indeed, one of the most highly specialized of 

 'grass-patterns.' (See Fig. 52 and Chapter VII.) 



Again, among the true plovers we find an outcropping of the heather pat- 

 tern, in conformity with the heatli- and tundra-haunting habits of the birds 

 that wear it. Such are the several races of the Golden Plover (Charadrius), 

 which breeds in the far north of both continents, and, to some extent, its rel- 

 ative the Black-bellied Plover (Sqtiatarola), of like distribution. 



Good examples of the pure beach t5^e are the winter costumes of the 

 Knot (Tringa canutus), the Sanderling (Calidris arenaria), the Semipalmated 

 Sandpiper (Ereunetes), and the Stints (Tringa minuta, T. temminckii, etc.). 

 Most of the birds of this family wear a more grass-like pattern in summer 

 than in winter, a fact which is in perfect keeping with their habits, for during 

 the nesting season they tend to forsake the beaches and to live among 

 the weeds and grasses. Some, like the Pectoral Sandpiper {Tringa 



53 



