344 
SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. 
black, small and thick on the throat and breast, larger and thinner as 
they descend to the tail ; legs a yellow clay color ; claws black. 
The female is as thickly spotted below as the male ; but the young 
birds, of both sexes, are pure white below, without any spots ; they also 
want the orange on the bill. These circumstances I have verified on 
numerous individuals. 
Species IV. TRINGA SEMIPALMATA. 
SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. 
[Plate LXIII. Fig. 4 ] 
This is one of the smallest of its tribe; and seems to have been 
entirely overlooked, or confounded with another which it much resembles 
( Tringa pusilla), and with whom it is often found associated. 
Its half-webbed feet, however, are sufficient marks of distinction 
between the two. It arrives and departs with the preceding species ; 
flies in flocks with the Stints, Purres, and a few others ; and is some- 
times seen at a considerable distance from the sea, on the sandy shores 
of our fresh water lakes. On the twenty-third of September, I met 
with a small flock of these birds in Burlington Bay, on Lake Champlain. 
They are numerous along the seashores of New Jersey; but retire to 
the south on the approach of cold weather. 
This species is six inches long, and twelve in extent ; the bill is black, 
an inch long, and very slightly bent ; crown and body above dusky 
brown, the plumage edged with ferruginous, and tipped with white ; tail 
and wings nearly of a length ; sides of the rump white ; rump and tail- 
coverts black ; wing quills dusky black, shafted and banded with white, 
much in the manner of the Least Snipe ; over the eye a line of white ; 
lesser coverts tipped with white; legs and feet blackish ash, the latter 
half-webbed. Males and females alike in color. 
These birds varied greatly in their size, some being scarcely five 
inches and a half in length, and the bill not more than three-quarters ; 
others measured nearly seven inches in the whole length, and the bill 
upwards of an inch. In their general appearance they greatly resemble 
the Stints or Least Snipe ; but unless we allow that the same species 
may sometimes have the toes half-webbed, and sometimes divided to the 
origin, and this not in one or two solitary instances, but in whole flocks, 
which would be extraordinary indeed, we cannot avoid classing this as 
a new and distinct species. 
