some have started to acquire a few breeding-plumage feathers. In non-breeding plumage, birds are brown-grey above and white below, with a brown-grey breast-band and no flank-streaks. When hints of a breeding plumage are acquired, a rusty tinge develops on the breast and ear-coverts, some flank streaks appear, and on the upper parts the non-breeding-plumaged feathers are replaced by feathers with black centres, grey tips and buff or pale chestnut fringes. Juvenile Cox's Sandpipers are known from only two individuals, one from Massachusetts and one from Japan, both believed to be Cox's Sandpiper based on their morphology, but not identified with certainty. These birds closely resembled juvenile Pectoral Sandpipers, but without a well-demarcated breast-band (although the Japanese bird showed strong streaking on the breast-sides). In this plumage, the birds also showed large amounts of white on the uppertail-coverts. Subsequent (and earlier) records The original specimen of "Cooper's" sandpiper Cooper's sandpiper, "Calidris" × cooperi was described (as Tringa cooperi) by Spencer Fullerton Baird in 1858 based on a specimen collected on Long Island, New York, in May 1833 and deposited at the American Museum of Natural History. It was named after the conchologist William Cooper, who collected the bird. When John Cox examined slides of the specimen in February 1988, he found a number of features in common with the Australian birds. The birds appeared to be of the same size and structure, with several plumage features in common including a heavily streaked head and neck with a rusty wash, a split supercilium, and identically-patterned upperparts feathers. Although the bill of the Cooper's specimen was straight (compared to the drooping bill of Cox's), this could be due to damage and distortion. The birds do differ insofar as that the Cooper's specimen has a spotted, not streaked breast. This could be accounted for by the plumage stage, given the differences in the times of year when the specimens were collected; also, some of the Cox's sandpipers seen in Australia have had similar underparts markings to the Cooper's specimen. Nonetheless, those that have directly compared the Cooper's and Cox's sandpipers feel that they are not identical. Pattern of records in Australia Most records to date have come from the more heavily populated south and south-east of Australia. Records outside Australia A mysterious juvenile Calidris sandpiper was encountered on Duxbury Beach, Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, United States, in September, 1987, and was tentatively identified as a