76 
BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER. 
months of September and October ; soon after which they disap- 
pear. Flocks of them, chiefly young birds, appear in the neighbor- 
hood of Philadelphia every autumn, on their passage to the south. 
Although these birds are occasionally found along our coast, from 
Georgia to Maine, yet they are nowhere numerous. Our moun- 
tains being generally covered with forests, 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 unincumbered wdth woods. 
The bird which is figured in the plate measured ten inches 
and a half in length, and twenty-one inches in breadth ; bill and 
legs of a dusky slate color ; eye very large, blue black ; nostrils 
placed in a deep furrow, and half covered with a prominent mem- 
brane ; 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, yellow- 
ish 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 ; the /ong feathers of the sides, 
at the junction of the wings, brown ; 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 ; the outer toe connected as far 
as the first joint with the middle one ; hind toe very small. A 
male. 
