THE CURLEW-BILLED SANDPIPER. 
115 
of their visit, tliey are not very frequently seen, because 
they seldom go in large flocks, and hunt for food in retired 
rocky places, where they may be observed, at ebb tide 
especially, following each retiring wave, to pick small 
shell-fish from the stones, and displaying great activity in 
escaping the reflux of the tide. 
In the decided summer plumage, nnd in the various 
consequent vernal and autumnal changes, of both this kind 
and the Dunlin, the differences are very obvious, this 
species changing to red underneath, and the Dunlin to black. 
It seems likely that these birds may occasionally breed 
here. In the last week of May 1833, Mr. Gould shot a 
pair near Sandwich, in full summer plumage. Mr. Thomp- 
son states, that this species is a regular summer visitant in 
Ireland, and small flocks of them are frequently to be seen 
in the autumn in Cornwall, Devonshire, and Hampshire, 
and sometimes also in Kent, Norfolk, Durham, and Northum- 
berland, as well as in Scotland. This appears to be the 
bird which Pennant describes in his ^Arctic Zoology,' imder 
the name of the Ked Sandpiper ; it is said to visit the shores 
of the Caspian Sea, Lake Baikal, and especially the mouth 
of the Don. 
According to Temminck, Holland is an occasional breed- 
ing place with this species, whose eggs are said to be yel- 
lowish white spotted with brown. It, no doubt, breeds far 
to the north in America in the summer, and migrates, as 
Audubon states, as far south as Florida in the winter. 
The Curlew-billed Sandpiper {Tringa suharquata), 
sometimes called the Pigmy Curlew, or Pigmy Sandpiper. 
— This bird is very like the black-breasted species, for which 
it is, no doubt, frequently mistaken ; its bill is half as long 
again as the head, and slightly decurved near the end, like 
that of the Dunlin, than which species the one under notice 
is considerably larger, being generally about nine inches in 
length. 
Yarrell calls this the Curlew Sandpiper, and says, one of 
the earliest notices referring to it as a British bird occurs in 
Boys' History of Sandwich, in reference to a specimen shot 
in that neighbourhood ; and Pennant refers to a second 
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