MAY ON THE MOORS 81 



sitting - . This is also the date when the sandpipers lay. 

 Whether it be because I love them — and they recipro- 

 cate the sentiment — at any rate these charming" little 

 summer-songsters have come to live right beside me, 

 actually in my garden — or rather among- the bushes 

 and shrubs that surround it. In the spring- of 1905, there 

 were four nests, the nearest close under my window : 

 and all quite 100 yards from the river-side. These four 

 nests were placed in little hollows on a rough bankside, 

 one beneath a tiny spruce, another overhung- by fern. 

 One was prettily situate in the midst of a clump of prim- 

 roses, the fourth almost openly among- dead grasses, 

 though within a yard of a footpath. 



Usually the sandpipers' nests are on the broken grassy 

 banks of burns — sometimes right in the angler's path, 

 and the old bird flutters out across the shingle with well- 

 feigned lameness. A favourite site is among the low 

 vegetation, such as ramps and dog's-mercury, that grows 

 beneath waterside alders ; in beds of osier-saplings, or 

 among dead leaves, coltsfoot, and wild hyacinths on 

 some mossy tree-clad slope. Many nests are on drifted 

 beds of shingle and sand, overgrown with low brush- 

 wood. 



Pied Flycatcher. — The status of this little warbler 

 has altered in the north during the last twenty years. 

 From being a scarce "come-by-chance," it must now 

 be accounted a regular spring-migrant. Not, it is true, 

 in any great numbers — merely a few pairs scattered 

 along each main river-valley, with its sequestered sub- 

 sidiary glens — nor always easy to detect amidst the 

 gnarley grey birches which, in such spots, form their 

 favourite resorts. The first ever noticed at home was 

 on May 7th, 1885; and we subsequently perfected their 



