Life histories of North American shore birds, Part 1 (of 2)Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American shore birds, Part 1 (of 2)
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- Behavior; Shore birds -- North America
Young birds are in juvenal plumage when they arrive here in August and
generally do not show much signs of molting before they leave here in
September. This plumage is darker and more richly colored above than in
the spring adult; the feathers of the crown, back, scapulars and all
wing coverts are broadly edged with rich, bright browns, "hazel" or
"cinnamon rufous," broadest and brightest on the back and scapulars;
some scapulars are tipped with white; the throat is often faintly, but
sometimes not at all, streaked with dusky. A partial postjuvenal molt in
the fall, involving the body plumage and some of the scapulars and
tertials, produces a first winter plumage which can be distinguished
from the adult by the retained juvenal wing coverts, scapulars, and
tertials. At the first prenuptial molt the next spring young birds
become indistinguishable from adults, except for some of the old juvenal
wing coverts.
The complete postnuptial molt of adults begins in August and is mainly
accomplished after the birds have migrated. At a partial prenuptial
molt, mainly in April and May, the adult renews the body plumage and
tail and some of the tertials and wing coverts. Adults in spring are
more brightly colored, with more rufous and buffy edgings, and the
breast is more distinctly streaked than in fall.]
_Food._--These birds appear to be feeding on small crustaceans and worms
on the beaches and on insects and their larvae in the marshes. It is to
be hoped that with the increase of the birds the pest of green-head
flies and of mosquitoes in the salt marshes may diminish. E. A. Preble
(1923) examined two stomachs from birds shot in the Pribilof Islands and
found that one of them contained amphipods exclusively, the other the
following items: "23 seeds of bottle brush (_Hippuris vulgaris_), 50 per
cent; bits of hydroid stems, 40 per cent; and chitin from the blue
mussel (_Mytilus edulis_), 10 per cent." A. H. Howell (1924) reports as
follows: "Of the 19 stomachs of this bird collected in Alabama,
practically all contained larvae or pupae of small flies (Chironomidae)
in a few bits of aquatic beetles were found." Dr. Alexander Wetmore
(1916) found in the stomach of a bird taken in Porto Rico "the heads of
more than 100 minute fly larvae (75 per cent) and fragments of small
beetles (_Hetercerus_ sp.) (25 per cent)."
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