354 
BARTRAM’S SANDPIPER. 
gardens, on the banks of the river Schuylkill, I first found it. 
On the same meadows, I have since shot several other indi- 
viduals of the species, and have thereby had an opportunity of 
taking an accurate drawing as well as description of it. 
Unlike most of their tribe, these birds appeared to prefer 
running about among the grass, feeding on beetles and other 
winged insects. There were three or four in company ; they 
seemed extremely watchful, silent, and shy, so that it was 
always with extreme difficulty I could approach them. 
These birds are occasionally seen there during the months 
of August and September, but whether they breed near I have 
not been able to discover. Having never met with them on 
the sea shore, I am persuaded that their principal residence 
is in the interior, in meadows and such like places. They 
run with great rapidity, sometimes spreading their tail and 
dropping their wings, as birds do who wish to decoy you from 
their nest ; when they alight they remain fixed, stand very 
erect, and have two or three sharp whistling notes as they 
mount to fly. They are remarkably plump birds, weighing 
upwards of three quarters of a pound ; their flesh is superior, 
in point of delicacy, tenderness, and flavour, to any other of 
the tribe with which I am acquainted. 
This species is twelve inches long, and twenty-one in 
extent ; the bill is an inch and a half long, slightly bent down- 
wards, and wrinkled at the base, the upper mandible black on 
its ridge, the lower, as well as the edge of the upper, of a fine 
yellow ; front, stripe over the eye, neck, and breast, pale 
ferruginous, marked with small streaks of black, which, on the 
lower part of the breast, assume the form of arrow-heads ; 
crown, black, the plumage slightly skirted with whitish ; chin, 
orbit of the eye, whole belly and vent, pure white ; hind head 
and neck above, ferruginous, minutely streaked with black ; 
back and scapulars, black, the former slightly skirted with 
interior, and not on the sea coast, like most of its congeners. The lengthened 
form, more conspicuous in the wedge shape of the tail, is at variance with the 
greater part of the Totani, and reminds us of the Kildeer Plover. — E d. 
