DCHP-1 Online

purple sandpiper

• a shore bird, Erolia maritima, common in the North, so called because of its winter feathers of purplish black over underparts of white.

  • 1908  Sir John Richardson many years ago stated that it bred extensively on Melville Island and on the shores of Hudson Bay.
  • 1942  Very few white men have seen what we saw--the mating of the purple sandpiper.
  • 1956  (1959)  Purple Sandpiper [is also called] Big Beachy bird (Nfld., "Labr."). . . .