470 PIPING PLOVER. 
other; the latter by a curved band round its sides, forming 
the ring or half-collar round the neck, but narrow and almost 
interrupted before. The wings are four and three-quarter 
inches long, and reach when closed to the tip of the tail; the 
wing-coverts are darker than the back feathers, and are all 
edged with white: the larger coverts are broadly terminated 
with white, constituting the band across the wings: the quill- 
feathers are dusky ; the secondaries are broadly white inside, 
with margins of the same: the primaries are blackish at the 
point, shafted and obliquely centred with white; the four 
euter ones are blackish on their outer margins where the 
others are white. The tail is two and a half inches in length, 
nearly square at tip, being much less rounded than in the 
semipalmated species, white beneath for half its length, and 
blackish at tip; the outer tail-feather is wholly white, the 
next is also white, and with a single spot of black, which on 
the third extends much more, and still more on the fourth 
and fifth, till the last is merely terminated with white, the 
middle ones being wholly dusky from the white of the base. 
The feet are greenish yellow tinged with orange, and the nails 
black. 
Those authors who describe the autumnal plumage as much 
darker are still labouring under the erroneous opinion, which 
they had rejected, of this being the same with the C. semipal- 
matus. On the contrary, it is, if anything, still paler at that 
season, and considerably resembles that of the young birds, 
which are distinguished by the absence of the neck ring and 
sincipital crescent, and the bill being entirely blackish. 
As will appear by referring to Wilson’s two articles on the 
ring-plovers, this species is commonly met with during the 
whole summer along the sandy coasts of the United States, on 
the approach of winter retiring south: it lays in the month of 
July on the sandy beach, three or four eggs, very large for the 
bird, of an obscure clay colour, all sprinkled with numerous 
reddish spots. It runs rapidly, holding the wings half ex- 
panded ; and utters a very soft and mellow cry. 
