GOLDEN PLOVER. 363 
remarks his having seen a variety of the Golden Plover, with Mack 
breasts, which he supposed to be the young.* 
The Golden Plover is common in the northern parts of Europe. It 
breeds on high and heathy mountains. The female lays four eggs, of 
a pale olive color, variegated with blackish spots. They usually fly in 
small flocks, and have a shrill whistling note. They are very frequent 
in Siberia, where they likewise breed ; extend also to Kamtschatka, and 
as far south as the Sandwich Isles. In this latter place, Mr. Pennant 
remarks, " they are very small." 
Although these birds are occasionally found along our seacoast, from 
Georgia to Maine, yet they are nowhere numerous ; and I have never 
met with them in the interior. Our mountains being generally covered 
with forest, and no species of heath having, as yet, been discovered 
within the boundaries of the United States, these birds are probably 
induced to seek the more remote arctic regions of the continent to breed 
and rear their young in, where the country is more open, and unencum- 
bered with woods. 
The Golden Plover is ten inches and a half long, and twenty-one 
inches in extent ; bill short, of a dusky slate color ; eye very large, blue 
black ; nostrils placed in a deep furrow, and half covered with a pro- 
minent membrane ; whole upper parts black, thickly marked with 
roundish spots of various tints of golden yellow ; wing-coverts, and hind 
part of the neck, pale brown, the latter streaked with yellowish ; front, 
broad line over the eye, chin, and sides of the same, yellowish white, 
streaked with small pointed spots of brown olive ; breast gray, Avith 
olive and white ; sides under the wings marked thinly with transverse 
bars of pale olive ; belly and vent white ; wing quills black, the middle 
of the shafts marked with white ; greater coverts black, tipped with 
white ; tail rounded, black, barred with triangular spots of golden 
yellow ; legs dark dusky slate ; feet three-toed, with generally the slight 
rudiments of a heel, the outer toe connected as far as the first joint 
with the middle one. The male and female differ very little in color. 
* Arct. Zool. p. 484. 
