it constantly resorts to the muddy shores and estuaries 

 at low water. 



In the fall, when the flocks of young birds associate 

 together, which may easily be known by the greyness 

 of their plumage, they are selected by the gunners in 

 preference to the older and darker birds, being tender, 

 fat, and fine-flavoured game. In the months of October 

 and November they gradually pass on to their winter 

 quarters in the warmer parts of the continent. Transient 

 flocks of young, bred in higher latitudes, visit the 

 shores of Cohasset by the middle of August, but, 

 timorous, wild, and wandering, they soon hasten to 

 rejoin the host they had accidentally forsaken." 



Mr. Nuttall's description of the various plumages of 

 the bird at different ages and seasons, is so good that 

 I will make no apology for continuing my quotation 

 from his notice: — "In the summer plumage the general 

 colour above is brownish grey, striped faintly on the 

 neck, more conspicuously on the head and back, with 

 blackish brown; the scapulars, tertiaries, and their 

 coverts, irregularly barred with the same. Tail coverts 

 white; tail even whitish, thickly mottled with pale 

 ashy brown, that colour forming the ground of the 

 central feathers, which are barred with dusky brown 

 at their extremities; spurious wing primary coverts; a 

 great portion of the anterior extremities of the primaries, 

 the axillary feathers, and under wing coverts black, 

 with a shade of brown; the remaining lower and 

 longer portion of the j)rimaries, and the upper row of 

 under wing coverts, white; the posterior primaries 

 tipped with the same; secondaries and the outer webs 

 of their greater coverts white, marbled with dusky. 

 Wings rather longer than the tail. The lores with a 

 spotted liver brown streak, bounded above by a spotted 



