272 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



the marsh, and contains usually four eggs, grayish-white in color, with markings of 

 brown and lilac. 



The greater yellowlegs is fourteen or fifteen inches long and about twenty-five in 

 extent ; the wing is about seven and a half, the bill two and a quarter inches in 

 length. The upper surface is blackish, variegated with white and grayish ; the crown 

 and hind neck are grayish-white, streaked with dusky ; the upper tail-coverts are 

 white, irregularly barred with the same ; the middle tail-feathers are grayish, darker 

 barred, the remainder of the tail white with dusky bars ; the sides of the head and 

 neck, with all the lower parts, are white, the breast, sides and flanks transversely 

 marked with dusky, the throat and abdomen unspotted, but all the rest streaked 

 with dusky. The bill is black, the eyes brown, the legs and feet deep yellow. 



Tl)e iyac£)~l>elUed Plover. 



Distinguished in appearance, and animated though dignified in movements, the 

 black-bellied plover never fails to be attractive. Though of almost world-wide dis- 

 tribution, it is more numerous in the northern hemisphere. In America it ranges 

 from the Arctic regions to Brazil and the United States of Colombia, breeding, so 

 far as known, only near the margin of the far northern ocean. It is most abundant 

 along the sea coasts, though found also in the interior, particularly about the Great 

 Lakes, occasionally as well congregating in thousands along some of the inland 

 streams. On its northward journey it passes through the Middle Atlantic States in 

 May, and when southward bound reaches the same region in August. Some of the 

 birds pass the winter in the Southern States, but most of them probably do not sojourn 

 so far north at this season. Individuals have been found in Florida during the sum- 

 mer, but without indication of breeding. 



The whistling plover, beetle-head, or bull-head, as this bird is variously known, 

 is quite fond of the society of its relatives, and often is to be seen feeding in company 

 with such species as knots, turnstones, red-backed sandpipers, golden and ring- 

 necked plovers. As a rule, the black-bellied plover moves in considerably smaller 

 companies in spring than in autumn, and when on the wing moves strongly and 

 swiftly, often in straggling array, or in lines much like seme of the ducks. As a favor- 

 ite resort may be mentioned the extensive sand flats along the shore, where in the 

 shallow water this bird seeks its food of insects and small shell-fish ; but it also fre- 

 quents the muddy margins of the marshes, as well as the close-cropped or sparsely 

 grassy uplands adjacent, and is often active long after darkness has fallen. It is said 

 at times to turn over and over in the air like a tumbler pigeon, and evidently for simi- 

 lar reason. Whether on the wing or patrolling the sand flats this bird is ever on the 



