SNIPES, SANDPIPERS, ETC.: PECTORAL SANDPIPER 271 
Food. —Aquatic worms, grasshoppers and many other insects, snails, and other 
small mollusks. 
General Habits. —While the notes as well as the general habits 
of the two Yellow-legs are much alike, the Lesser, Mr. Eaton says, is 
“slightly more vociferous, uttering more notes in succession, commonly 
following the formula, ivheu, wheu-wheu-wheu-wheu, wheu-wheu, wheu ” 
(1909, p. 326). Messrs. Nichols and Harper add a “musical ‘summons , 
call, too-whee too-whee, too-whee , almost identical with that of the 
Greater Yellow-legs, but apparently not so loud” (1916, pp. 250-251). 
A migrating Yellow-legs, on August 1, 1912, came aboard a sailing 
schooner, the Captain reported to Doctor Wetmore, midway between 
Bermuda and Porto Rico. In South America, Doctor Wetmore writes 
that in the case of the Yellow-legs, “as in that of other migrant species 
from North America, it was instructive to note that the migration 
southward came in September and October when the birds traveled 
southward with the unfolding of the southern spring and that the 
return northward was initiated by the approach of vigorous weather 
in far-away Patagonia,” and he adds that “during early April the 
migration became a veritable rush so that on the night of April 5, at 
Tucuman, the air was filled with the cries of these and other waders in 
steady flight northward above the city” (1926b, p. 150). 
Additional Literature.—Brewster, William, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., 
Harvard College, LXVI, 259-260, 1925.— Nichols, J. T., Auk, XXXVII, 530- 
534, 1920.— Street, J. F., Auk, XL, 577-583, 1923. 
SANDPIPERS: Subfamily Calidrinae 
PECTORAL SANDPIPER: Pisobia melanotos (Vieillot) 
Description. — Length: 8-9.5 inches, wing 5-5.5, hill 1.1-1.2, tarsus 1-1.1. '1 ip 
of hill expanded and heavily pitted; middle tail feathers pointed and projecting. Adults 
in breeding plumage: Upperparts generally, including wings, light brown streaked and 
spotted with black; feathers with black center, edged with ashy or reddish brown, 
rump, median upper tail coverts and middle tail feathers black, lateral coverts white, 
spotted; outer tail feathers brownish, edged with white; wing quills dark brown, axil- 
lars white, outside wing linings mottled or dusky; chin arid belly white, chest huffy, 
finely streaked with blackish brown making an abrupt wide pectoral band; iris brown, 
bill, legs and feet greenish yellow or yellowish green in life. Adults in winter plumage. 
Similar, but the rusty tint above almost or wholly wanting, breast bufTy, streams 
indistinct. Young injuvenal plumage: Similar to summer adults but long fcatheis o 
back and shoulders more extensively edged with white, buffy of breast more intense 
and less sharply streaked; legs and feet lighter or yellower than in adults. 
Comparisons. —The White-rumped and Pectoral sandpipers have greenish legs, 
the Baird, black legs. The White-rumped and Baird have similar breast bands but 
the color of the upper tail coverts, black and white in the Pectoral, brown and gray in 
the Baird, and white in the White-rumped, as well as the longer bill, at tip expanded 
and heavily pitted in the Pectoral, while only “sensibly widened” and slightly pitted 
in the White-rumped, together with the darker, more conspicuous breast band of the 
Pectoral are distinctive characters. (Sec p. 273.) 
