BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER. 



133 



a proof how wide it wanders, this species has also been tarely 

 obtained even in France and England, and a specimen figured 

 in the Linnaean Transactions of London is there given as a 

 new addition to the fauna of Great Britam. It was shot in 

 September, 1826, in the parish of Melbourne, Cambridgeshire, 

 in company with the Siberian Plover, or Guignard ( Charadrius 

 morinellus) . 



Its food while here consists principally of land and marine 

 insects, particularly grasshoppers, which, abounding in the 

 autumn, become the favorite prey of a variety of birds ; even 

 the Turnstone at this season, laying aside his arduous employ- 

 ment, is now content to feed upon these swarming and easily 

 acquired insects. 



This Sandpiper is distributed throughout North America, breed- 

 ing in Arctic and Sub-arctic regions. It is a rather rare visitor to 

 this northeastern section, though more frequently seen in the 

 autumn than during the spring migrations, the bulk of the flocks 

 going north by the western inland routes, and nesting on the dry 

 plains in the Barren Ground region, adjacent to the Mackenzie and 

 Anderson Rivers. These birds must migrate very rapidly and 

 make but few halts ; for while they are quite abundant on their 

 nesting-ground, they are rarely seen while migrating. They range 

 in winter through the West Indies and southward as far as Brazil 

 and Peru. 



The Buff-breasted Sandpiper is a bird of the dry upland rather 

 than of the marsh or the sandy beach. Its principal food consists 

 of insects, — beetles, grasshoppers, and such ; but it varies its diet 

 with small marine forms, and does not object to an occasional 

 meal of small fruit and berries. The birds are very tame, and are 

 usually met with in small flocks of ten or fifteen. The note, which 

 is generally heard as the bird rises from the ground, is a low /weef, 

 repeated several times. 



