RUDDY PLOVER. 
31 
RUDDY PLOVER. — CHARADRIUS RUBIDUS. — Plate LXIII. 
Fig. 3. 
Arct. Zool. No. 404. — Lath. Syn. iii. p. 195, No. 2. — Turt, Syst. p. 415. 
CALIDRIS ARENARIA.—lLhiGER. 
Tringa arenaria. JBonap. Synop. p. 320. 
This bird is frequently found in company with the sander- 
ling, which, except in colour, it very much resembles. It is 
generally seen on the sea-coast of New Jersey in May and 
October, on its way to and from its breeding place in the north. 
It runs with great activity along the edge of the flowing or 
retreating waves on the sands, picking up the small bivalve 
shell-fish, which supplies so many multitudes of the plover and 
sandpiper tribes. 
I should not be surprised if the present species turn out 
hereafter to be the sanderling itself, in a different dress. Of 
many scores which I examined, scarce two were alike ; in 
some the plumage of the back was almost plain, in others the 
black plumage was just shooting out. This was in the month 
of October. Naturalists, however, have considered it as a 
separate species; but have given us no farther particulars 
than that, “ in Hudson’s Bay, it is known by the name of 
Mistchaychekiskaweshish,” * — a piece of information certainly 
very instructive. 
The ruddy plover is eight inches long, and fifteen in extent ; 
the bill is black, an inch long, and straight ; sides of the neck 
and whole upper parts, speckled largely with white, black, and 
ferruginous ; the feathers being centred with black, tipt with 
white, and edged with ferruginous, giving the bird a very 
motley appearance ; belly and vent, pure white ; wing-quills, 
black, crossed with a band of white ; lesser coverts, whitish, 
with this bird at the ponds in the vicinity of the Falls of the Missouri. That 
it was our species I had ocular evidence by a skin brought by Captain Lewis 
himself, and presented, among other specimens of natural history, to the Phila- 
delphia Museum. — See History of Lewis and Clark's Expedition^ vol. ii. p. 343. 
* Latham. 
