GOLDEN PLOVER. 
161 
coast, frbm Georgia to Maine, yet they are no where 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 unincum- 
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 colour; eye very 
large, blue black; nostrils placed in a deep furrow, and half 
covered with a prominent 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, with 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, 
tipt 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 fe- 
male ditfer very little in colour. 
VOL. III. — y 
