140 The Ottawa Naturalist. [October 



a much larger black spruce, on a horizontal bough, twenty-five 

 feet from the ground. I had never seen this bird in its breeding 

 habitat before, or had even met with it On the above occasion, 

 while walking through the little swamp, my attention was attracted 

 by its loud and singular call or alarm note. It would sit on the 

 topmost dead branches ot the trees and rapidly repeat three times 

 syllables, which one writer compared to ' quirk,' ' quirk,' but 

 which I thought more resembled three creaks of a rusty door 

 hinge. The bird is very restless in the vicinity of its nest, con- 

 tinually on the move ; the nest itself is built of small, dry tamarac 

 and spruce twigs, interwoven and lined with tree lichen and moss. 



I might mention several other birds as met with in this 

 locality, but space forbids, so I must leave them for the present ; 

 I will only refer to the ^olitary sandpiper. I wrote a short paper 

 on this bird, which appeared in the Ottawa Naturalist, of 

 December, 1899. There I stated my observations on the bird up 

 to that date (1899) and concluded with an account ot a nest and 

 three eggs found by me near a creek on Amherst Island, the 

 identi ication ot which I considered at the time absolutely indisput- 

 able. The nest was on a sandy knoll, near a creek ; the flight *of 

 the bird was peculiar, but what I most of all relied on, were the 

 evident whitish features of the tail. 



Subsequent developments however, lead me to suppose that 

 my identification was faulty, for Mr. W. Raine of Toronto, received 

 from Alberta, two sets of eggs, taken from the disused nests ot 

 other birds built in trees, which it his corres))ondent is correct, 

 certainly belong to this species. I have seen one of these sets of 

 eggs and am impressed with their resemblance to eggs of the 

 greenshank, green and wood sandpipers of Europe, but of course 

 they are smaller, as they should be. It should be remembered 

 that Mr. Charles Dixon, the writer of ' non-indigenous British 

 birds,' in writing of this species some years ago, said " there can 

 be little doubt that this species lays its eggs in the deserted nests 

 of other birds in low trees, like its old-world representative, the 

 green sandpiper, is known to do." Dr. Brewer's record and my 

 own with regard to these eggs are unsatisfactory. 



As a supplement to my former paper, I may add I did not meet 

 with the solitary sandpiper after 1899, until May 22nd, 1903, when 



