bartram’s sandpiper. 87 
meadows, and such like places. They run with great 
rapidity, sometimes spreading 1 their tail, and dropping 
their wings, as birds do who wish to decoy you from 
their nest ; when they alight, they remain fixed, stand 
very erect, and have two or three sharp whistling 
notes as they mount to fly. They are remarkable 
« plump birds, weighing upwards of three quarters of a 
pound ; their flesh is superior, in point of delicacy, 
tenderness, and flavour, to any other of the tribe with 
which I am acquainted. 
This species is twelve inches long, and twenty-one 
in extent ; the bill is an inch and a half long, slightly 
bent downwards, and wrinkled at the base, the upper 
mandible, black on its ridge, the lower, as well as the 
edge of the upper, of a fine yellow ; front, stripe over 
the eye, neck, and breast, pale ferruginous, marked 
with small streaks of black, which, on the lower part 
of the breast, assume the form of arrow heads ; crown, 
black, the plumage slightly skirted with whitish ; chin, 
orbit of the eye, whole belly, and vent, pure white ; 
hind head, and neck above, ferruginous, minutely 
streaked with black ; back and scapulars, black, the 
former, slightly skirted with ferruginous, the latter, 
with white ; tertials, black, bordered with white ; 
primaries, plain black ; shaft of the exterior quill, 
snowy, its inner vane, elegantly pectinated with white ; 
secondaries, pale brown, spotted on their outer vanes, 
with black, and tipt with white ; greater coverts, 
dusky, edged with pale ferruginous, and spotted with 
black ; lesser coverts, pale ferruginous, each feather 
broadly bordered with white, within which is a con- 
centric semicircle of black; rump, and tail-coverts, 
deep brown black, slightly bordered with white ; tail, 
tapering, of a pale brown orange colour, beautifully 
spotted with black, the middle feathers centred with 
dusky ; legs, yellow, tinged with green ; the outer toe 
joined to the middle by a membrane ; lining of the 
wings, elegantly barred with black and white ; iris of 
of the eye, dark, or blue black, eye, very large. The 
male and female are nearly alike. 
