_Food._--Red-backed sandpipers obtain their food on the ocean beaches at low tide, on sandy flats or on mud flats, often feeding in company with sanderlings, or with other small shore birds. Some writers have referred to them as nervous and active running about in a lively manner while feeding, but I have usually found them rather sluggish and inactive at such times, easily approached and unsuspicious. Their food consists of small mollusks, sand fleas, and other small crustaceans, amphipods, flies and other insects and their larvae, diving and other aquatic beetles, marine worms, and occasionally a few seeds of aquatic plants. They are apt to gather where fish cleanings and other offal are thrown out, to feed on the flies and other insects that abound there. Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1905) writes: In feeding they frequently plunge the bill, slightly open to its base in the soft sand or mud, appear to work it about and when successful draw forth an amphipod or a worm. Several times on one occasion I saw one draw a worm to the water close at hand as if to wash it before swallowing it. On another occasion a couple of dunlins were so tame that it was possible to approach within 5 feet of them. They were diligently probing in the sandy mud, wading in water up to their bellies. At this depth it was necessary for them to immerse their heads entirely, and I could see them shut their eyes as they went under water. Whether the eyes were afterwards opened or not I am unable to say. When disturbed they flew but a short way, and if they happened to alight in water too deep for their legs, they swam readily, as do all shore birds. When disturbed the dunlin utters a short _kuk_. Their call note is distinctive, and resembles somewhat the word _purre_, by which name the European species is called. The note is plaintive and sometimes melodious, and recalls, without its harshness, the cry of the common tern. _Behavior._--The earlier writers refer to this as an active, restless bird. Audubon (1840) says: There seems to be a kind of impatience in this bird that prevents it from remaining any length of time in the same place, and you may see it scarcely alighted on a sand bar, fly off without any apparent reason to another, where it settles, runs for a few moments, and again starts off on wing. Giraud (1844) writes: