SANDERLING PLOVER. 
73 
picking up its food from the sand amid the roar of the 
ocean. It flies in numerous flocks, keeping a low, 
meandering course along the ridges of the 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 
as 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 
wdnter ; 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 
