190 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



early in eastern Ontario as the following records shows : On August 

 ist, 1896, I saw young ones near Graham lake, Leeds county, Ont., 

 on June 25th, 1899, I saw a single bird rise from a ditch at Lans- 

 downe, Ont., also two others near Lansdowne in June. In 1904, 

 on the 24th August, I saw six of these birds, four young ones and 

 the two old ones, about a mile north of Madoc, Ont. They rose 

 from a muddy pool by the roadside and all alighted on the fence 

 rail. They continued about the same place for more than a fort- 

 night, and I felt satisfied had been hatched near by. {Rev. C. J . 

 Young.) 



The uncertainty that has existed for so long concerning the nest- 

 ing of the solitary sandpiper seems to have been at last dispelled 

 chiefly through the work of Mr. Walter Raine and his collectors. 

 In Volume XVIII, pp. 135-138 of The Ottawa Naturalist, he describes 

 at length the taking of the first three clutches of the eggs of this 

 bird. The following is his description of the nests and eggs. 



Set. I — Taken in northern Alberta, June i6th, 1903; four eggs 

 advanced in incubation; collector, Evan Thomson. This set was 

 found in an old nest of the American robin, built 15 feet up in a 

 tamarack tree, that was growing in the middle of a large muskeg 

 dotted with tamaracks ; the bird was flushed off the nest but unfor- 

 tunately not secured. The eggs are exceedingly handsome and 

 very different from the eggs of any other American sandpiper. 

 The ground colour is pale greenish-white, heavily blotched and 

 spotted, chiefly at the larger ends, with vandyke brown, chestnut 

 brown and purplish grey; the average size of these four eggs is 

 1 . 36 X.98, and they are very large for the size of the bird. Set II — 

 Northern Alberta, June 9th, 1904; four eggs found in the nest of 

 a bronzed grackle, built in a low tree ; these eggs were unfortunately 

 lost owing to Mr. Thompson first blowing them and then leaving 

 the shells in the nest until he returned with his gun to secure the 

 parent bird, but on his return on the following day, no trace of 

 of the eggs was to be found, the bird evidently had carried them 

 away. Set III — Northern Alberta, June 24th, 1904; four eggs 

 found in the nest of a cedar wax-wing, which was built in a smal 

 spruce tree growing in a swamp, the nest being about five feet from, 

 the water, and Mr. Thompson was fortunate in shooting the parent 

 bird as she flew from the nest, and thus identification is very com- 

 plete, and established the fact once for all that the solitary sand- 



