SANDERLING PLOVER. 
361 
tumbling surf. On alighting, the whole scatter about after 
the receding wave, busily picking up those minute bivalves 
already described. As the succeeding wave returns, it bears 
the whole of them before it in one crowded line ; then is the 
moment seized by the experienced gunner to sweep them in 
flank with his destructive shot. The flying survivors, after a 
few aerial meanders, again alight, and pursue their usual 
avocation as busily and unconcernedly as before. These birds 
are most numerous on extensive sandy beaches in front of the 
ocean. Among rocks, marshes, or stones covered with sea- 
weed, they seldom make their appearance. 
The Sanderling is eight inches long, and fourteen inches in 
extent ; the bill is black, an inch and a quarter in length, 
slender, straight, fluted along the upper mandible, and exactly 
formed like that of the Sandpiper; the head, neck above, 
back, scapulars, and tertials, are gray white ; the shafts, blackish, 
and the webs, tinged with brownish ash ; shoulder of the 
wing, black ; greater coverts, broadly tipt with white ; quills, 
black, crossed with a transverse band of white ; the tail extends 
a little beyond the wings, and is of a grayish ash colour, edged 
with white, the two middle feathers being about half an inch 
longer than the others ; eye, dark hazel ; whole lower parts 
of the plumage, pure white ; legs and naked part of the thighs, 
black ; feet, three-toed, each divided to its origin, and bordered 
with a narrow membrane. 
Such are the most common markings of this bird, both of 
males and females, particularly during the winter ; but many 
others occur among them, early in the autumn, thickly marked 
or spotted with black on the crown, back, scapulars, and 
tertials, so as to appear much mottled, having as much black 
as white on those parts. In many of these I have observed 
the plain gray plumage coming out about the middle of 
October ; so that, perhaps, the gray may be their winter, and 
the spotted their summer, dress. 
I have also met with many specimens of this bird, not only 
thickly speckled with white, and black above, but also on the 
