37^ 



KILDEER PLOVER. 



they can wade about in search of aquatic insects. At the close 

 of summer, they generally descend to the sea-shore, in small 

 flocks, seldom more than ten or twelve being seen together. 

 They are then more serene and silent, as well as difficult to 

 be approached. 



The kildeer is ten inches long, and twenty inches in extent ; 

 the bill is black ; frontlet, chin, and ring round the neck, 

 white ; fore part of the crown and auriculars, from the bill 

 backwards, blackish olive ; eyelids, bright scarlet ; eye, very 

 large, and of a full black ; from the centre of the eye back- 

 wards, a strip of white ; round the lower part of the neck is 

 abroad band of black ; below that, a band of white, succeeded 

 by another rounding band or crescent of black; rest of the 

 lower parts, pure white ; crown and hind head, light olive 

 brown ; back, scapulars, and wing-coverts, olive brown, skirted 

 with brownish yellow ; primary quills, black, streaked across 

 the middle with white ; bastard wing, tipt with white ; 

 greater coverts, broadly tipt with white; rump and tail- 

 coverts, orange ; tail, tapering, dull orange, crossed near the 

 end with a broad bar of black, and tipt with orange, the 

 two middle feathers near an inch longer than the adjoining 

 ones ; legs and feet, a pale light clay colour. The tertials, 

 as usual in this tribe, are very long, reaching nearly to the 

 tips of the primaries ; exterior toe, joined by a membrane to 

 the middle one, as far as the first joint. 



GEE AT TERX. {Sterna hirundo.) 

 PLATE LX.— Fig. 1. 



Arct. Zool. p. 524, No. 448.— Le Pierre Garin, ou Grande Hirondelle de Mer, Buff. 

 viii. 331, PI. ml. 9S7 '.—Bewick, ii. lSl.—Peale's Museum, No. 3485. 



STERNA WILSONIL— Box afarte* 



Sterna hirundo, Bonap. Synop. p. 354. — St. "Wilsonii, Bonap. Osserv. Sulla, 2d 

 edit. Del Begn. Anim. Cuv. p. 135. 



This bird belongs to a tribe very generally dispersed over the 

 shores of the ocean. Their generic characters are these : — 



* Mr Ord, in his reprint, and C. L. Bonaparte, when writing his 

 " Synopsis and Observations on the Nomenclature of Wilson," considered 



