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PIPING PLOVER. 
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shores, like the Ring-Plovers: they have a very remarkable habit 
of stirring the soil with their feet, to put in motion worms and 
aquatic insects, their exclusive food. They are more nocturnal 
than diurnal. They lay in the sand about four large eggs. The 
young very soon after they are hatched follow the mother, and 
pick up the food which she with great care points out to them. 
The Piping Plover is seven inches long, and fourteen in extent: 
the bill is bright yellow slightly tinged with orange for half its 
length, thence black: the eyelids are bright yellow and the irides 
dark brown. The plumage above generally, with the mere inter¬ 
ruption of the ring on the neck, is of an extremely pale brownish 
or dusky, inclining strongly to whitish ash: the front, part of the 
head between the bill and eyes, and the whole inferior surface 
from the chin to the tip of the lower tail-coverts, and including 
the under wing-coverts and long axillary feathers is pure white: 
the head and breast are ornamented, the former with a black 
crescent, that runs transversely between the eyes and bounds the 
white forehead on one side, and the ash-coloured parts of the head 
on the other; the latter by a curved band round its sides, forming 
the ring or half-collar round the neck, but narrow and almost 
interrupted before. The wings are four and three quarter inches 
long, and reach when closed to the tip of the tail; the wing-coverts 
are darker than the back feathers, and are all edged with white : 
the larger coverts are broadly terminated with white, constituting 
the band across the wings: the quill-feathers are dusky; the 
secondaries are broadly white inside with margins of the same: 
the primaries are blackish at the point, shafted and obliquely 
centred with white; the four outer ones are blackish on their 
outer margins where the others are white. The tail is two and a 
half inches in length, nearly square at tip, being much less 
rounded than in the Semipalmated species, white beneath for half 
its length, and blackish at tip; the outer tail-feather is wholly 
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