AMERICAN PECTORAL SANDPIPER. I37 



American Pectoral Sandpiper. Ei-oHa maculata 

 (Vieillot). 



The western form of the Pectoral Sandpiper (Plate 56) 

 breeds in Arctic America and visits South America, even so 

 far south as Patagonia, in winter. It has appeared so frequently 

 in the British Isles as to be accepted as a genuine migratory 

 wanderer, even by those who maintain that other trans-Atlantic 

 birds must have had assisted passages. As it is known to 

 visit southern Greenland on migration, it is possible that the 

 i^\N which have been noticed in Scotland and Scottish islands 

 may have reached us by this island route, but most of the 

 occurrences have been in the southern counties of England, 

 suggesting an eastward and probably unconscious drift on 

 westerly wind. The bird has occurred in spring, and certainly 

 once in July, but the majority of the visits have been in 

 autumn. 



The Pectoral Sandpiper is a shore bird, not unlike a very 

 large Little Stint with a pointed tail ; it feeds with Dunlins or 

 other waders on the invertebrates left by the tide, but also, 

 a])parently, visits the tide-line or the maritime fields and 

 marshes, since beetles and other insects have been found in its 

 stomach. Saunders speaks of its breeding call, a muffled hoo^ 

 hoo, but Yarrell gives the note which the bird utters when 

 rising as iweet, and this is the more likely sound to hear in 

 Britain. Rickards, who recorded the bird for Devon, likened 

 the note to that of the Curlew Sandpiper. Mr. M. J. Nicoll, 

 who, with the Duchess of Bedford, watched one in Kent in 

 July, says that its flight reminded him of that of the male Red- 

 shank when soaring. 



The head and upper parts generally are blackish brown with 

 rufous streaks and feather edgings ; there is a slight wing bar. 

 The central tail feathers are almost black, the outer ones dark 

 brown ; the breast is rather heavily streaked, and the abdomen 



