218 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Nesting. — Comparatively few of the great hosts of dunlins which 

 visit England in fall and winter breed on the mainland of Great 

 Britain. Macgillivray (1852) gives a good account of their nesting 

 habits in Scotland, as follows: 



The dunlins, in fact, breed in great numbers on the heaths of many parts of 

 Scotland and its larger islands, where they may be found scattered in the 

 haunts selected by the golden plovers, with which they are so frequently seen 

 in company that they have popularly obtained the name of plovers' pages. 

 Sometimes about the middle of April, but always before that of May, they are 

 seen dispersed over the moors in pairs like the birds just named, which at 

 this season they greatly resemble in manners. From this period until the end 

 of August none are to be found along the shores of the sea, instead of searching 

 which, they now seek for insects and worms, in the shallow pools, soft ground, 

 and by the edges of lakes and marshes. The male frequently flies up to a person 

 intruding upon his haunts, and sometimes endeavours to entice him away by 

 feigning lameness. 



Eev. Henry H. Slater (1898) says that the nest "is usually in a 

 tussock of grass, a roughly made hollow, inartistically lined with 

 grass, but often carefully concealed in the herbage." 



A. L. V. Manniche (1910) found the dunlin a common breeding 

 bird on the northeast coast of Greenland. He writes : 



The nests are most frequently built on hillocks with long grass. I found, 

 however, not seldom nests of dunlins on small islets covered with short grass, 

 but always near to or surrounded by shallow water. The dunlin's nest itf 

 often placed on similar spots, and has the same exterior as that of the 

 phalarope, but it can easily be distinguished, as the bottom of the dunlin's 

 nest is always lined with a few withered leaves of Salix arctica, while the 

 phalarope uses bent straws as layer for its eggs. On spots where many dunlins 

 nest several newly scratched but half-finished nests may always be found ; they 

 are probably left because the birds have found the ground too wet. The dunlins 

 like to nest on moors and bogs partly irrigated by melted snow streaming down 

 from the rocks. On such places I found many nests with eggs and newborn 

 downy young, which were lying close together in broods carefully guarded by the 

 old female, on isolated larger hillocks surrounded by the ice-cold snow water. 

 When the flood of melting snow is unusually strong, such localities may be 

 completely inundated, and then not only the eggs but also the frail young ones, 

 which are not yet able to save themselves by swimming through the cold water 

 to dry spots, will be destroyed. 



Eggs. — The great amount of variation in the beautiful eggs of 

 the dunlin is well illustrated in Frank Poynting's (1895) fine colored 

 plate of 12 eggs. Herbert Massey (1913) gives a better description 

 of the eggs than I can give, so I quote him, as follows : 



The eggs of this species resemble those of G. gallinago very closely in color, 

 but in comparing a series (74 sets or 296 eggs) with that of G. gallinago one 

 is struck by the greater proportion of the lighter ground colors in the dunlin, 

 the very deep olives and the very dark browns being almost absent. On the 

 other hand, the beautiful light blue-green and the pale buff are rare in 

 G. gallinago. The surface spots are chiefly two shades of brown, a rich red 

 and a dark brown, with, in many cases, spots of violet gray. In T. alpina it is 



