Tringa melanoleuca
Order Charadriiformes
Family Scolopacidae
Subfamily Tringinae
Other names: Winter Yellow-legs
Adult in spring.— Upper parts blackish and pale gray, speckled with white; basal half of the tail white. Under parts white, streaked in the throat with dusky, and on the breast and sides spotted and barred with gray.
Adult in winter and Immature.— Similar, but without the blackish on the upper parts; under parts streaked only on the neck and upper breast; legs yellow.
The Winter Yellow-legs is a common migrant along the coast, making the longest stay of any of our non-resident shore-birds; it is found from the middle of April through May, and from the middle of July through October. It frequents grassy marshes, but may be seen or heard on almost any muddy flat.
Its loud whistled note, kū, kū, kū, kū, is a familiar sound and calls our attention to its long, slender form high over head. When it lights, it bobs its head frequently, like the Solitary Sandpiper and the Ring-neck [Semipalmated Plover]. Its long slender legs and long bill are conspicuous. When it rises, its white upper tail-coverts are an excellent field-mark; the Black-bellied Plover has the same mark, but the bird is of a very different figure, with a bill only half as long. The Summer Yellow-legs, which is here during July and September, resembles its relative very closely, and if the two are not present at the same time, might be mistaken for the larger bird. The call of the Summer Yellow-legs, however, is almost always shorter; it utters often but a single kū, often two (the second lower than the first), more rarely three. The Winter Yellow-legs is always a wary bird, much less tame than the Summer Yellow-legs.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)