PECTORAL SANDPIPER. 
toe; the outer toe is connected at the very base with the middle 
by a very small membrane hardly visible in young individuals, 
which is also the case with T. platyrhynca: the nails are of a 
blackish horn colour. Such is this bird as it appears in the 
end of summer and early in autumn on the New Jersey coasts, 
still apparently in its perfect nuptial dress, or nearly so. Mr. 
Say informs us that all the individuals of the many flocks 
observed at Engineer Cantonment both in the spring and autumn 
weic of equal size; and we have also found the sexes to agree in 
this respect, perhaps more than is usual in other Sandpipers : in 
the spring dress, according to the same author, the colour of the 
upper part of the bird is much paler, almost destitute of black, 
and the feathers margined with pale cinereous. The upper part 
of the head is always darker than any part of the neck, and 
margined with ferruginous: the plumage of the neck beneath and 
the breast does not appear to undergo so much change as that of 
the upper part of the body. We have not seen the bird in this 
plumage, but it will be evident to every ornithologist conversant 
with the Sandpipers that the specimens described by Say were 
still in the winter dress, and we may conclude that the changes 
in this species are analogous to those of its allies. 
Several specimens of both sexes that we shot in New Jersey, 
evidently young birds, as they were killed at the same season as 
the adults described, are considerably paler and duller, the tints 
being blended and ill defined : the white even of the throat is 
diugy, quills and tail-feathers almost uniformly dusky and 
destitute of margins : they have not the least trace of the outer 
toe membrane. 
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