Identifier: birdlifeguid00chap (find matches)
Title: Bird-life; a guide to the study of our common birds
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Chapman, Frank M. (Frank Michler), 1864-1945 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1860-1946
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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tive little fellows, with black, gray and rusty backs and white under parts, who run along the shore, feeding on the small forms of life cast up by the waves. They are sociable birds, and even when feeding the members of a flock keep together, while when flying they move almost as one bird. These Sandpipers visit us in May, when journeying totheir summer homes within the Arctic Circle, and returnin July, to linger on our shores until October. Theircall-note is a cheery, peeping twitter, which probablysuggested one of their common names. Plovers. (Family Charadriid^:.) Most Plovers differ from Snipe in possessing threeinstead of four toes, and in having the scales on the tarsirounded, not square or transverse, Their bill is shorterand stouter than that of Snipe, and they do not probefor food, but pick it up from the surface. Although several species visit dry fields and uplands,they are ranked as shore birds or bay birds, and, as withSnipe, the species large enough to be ranked as game
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Plate XXXII. Page 124. PHCEBE. Length, 7-00 inches. Back dusky olive; crown blackish; under partswhite tinged with yellow; outer margin of outer tail-feathers whitish;bill black. PLOVERS. 99 have become comparatively rare. Of the one hundredknown species, six visit eastern North America—theBlack-breasted, Golden, Piping, Wilsons, Semipalmated,and Killdeer Plovers. Only the last two of these arecommon enough to deserve mention here. Killdeer ^ne Killdeer, with the exception of ^Egiaiitis vodfera. the Piping Plover, is the only bird of Plate xi. fljjg family that nests with us. It is irregularly distributed in the northeastern States, but itsnoisy call, hildee, Jcildee, and striking markings render ita conspicuous bird even where it is uncommon. It fre-quents uplands and lowlands, fields and shores, but prefersthe vicinity of water. Its nest of grasses is made on theground, and its four eggs are whitish, spotted and scrawledwith chestnut, chiefly at the larger end. The Semipalmated or

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