SCHINZ’S SANDPIPER. 463 
nails are blackish. As will easily be perceived, the specimen 
described is in the winter dress. 
This sandpiper is well known to appear in a summer vesture 
analogous to that of Zringa alpina at the same season ; but 
we have never met with an American specimen in that state. 
In the full-plumaged males the bill and feet are black; 
irides brown: before the eye a small blackish patch sur- 
mounted by a white stripe dotted with blackish grey, head 
above, back, and wing-coverts bright rufous, the feathers with 
merely a black centre: colours not so bright as in Tringa 
alpina : wings above blackish grey with black shafts ; point 
ot the primaries black, with white shafts: the ten middle tail- 
feathers as well as their upper coverts are blackish ; the lateral 
cinereous with their coverts white: the chin is white, the sides 
of the head and hind neck are of a ferruginous grey: throat 
white, longitudinally spotted with rufous grey; the breast 
almost entirely of a jet-black colour, always interrupted by 
some insulated white feathers, and never so broadly black as 
in Tringa alpina ; all the remaining under parts are white, 
with a very few dusky streaks on the sides. 
At one year of age the male is on the back of a less bri¢ht 
rufous spotted with black: on the breast the black consists 
merely of a spot, and is mixed with many white feathers. 
The female much resembles the male at the same age. The 
very young is above of a ferruginous colour varied with white, 
yellowish, and black ; all beneath white, streaked with dusky 
ferruginous on the throat. 
They frequent marshy shores, and the borders of lakes and 
brackish waters. They are very social even in the breeding 
time, and are then by no means shy: during autumn they 
join company even with different birds, and become very wild. 
Their voice resembles that of Zringa alpina, but is more 
feeble. They feed on worms, aquatic insects, and similar 
food: build near marshes and lakes, among weeds: they 
lay four eggs, smaller and much less in diameter than those 
of Tringa alpina, of a yellowish grey spotted with olive or 
chestnut brown. 
