12 
CHARADRIUS PLUVIALIS. 
gated with blackish spots. They usually fly in small 
flocks, and have a shrill whistling note. They are 
very frequent in Siberia, where they likewise breed ; 
extend also to Kamtschatka, and as far south as the 
Sandwich Isles. In this latter place, Mr Pennant 
remarks, “ they are very small.” 
Although these birds are occasionally found along 
our sea coast, from 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 unencumbered 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 pro- 
minent 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, grey, with olive and white ; sides, under 
the w ings, 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 female differ very little in colour. 
