232 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



detected at Dominica, West Indies, October 1, 1904; and at Momo- 

 tombo, Nicaragua, on May 23. (This last record represented by a 

 specimen in the British Museum.) 



Egg dates. — Alaska: 83 records, May 26 to July 8; 42 records, 

 June 4 to 30. Arctic Canada : 15 records, June 5 to July 7 ; 8 

 records, June 26 to July 3. 



EKOLIA FERRUGINEA (Brunnich) 

 CURLEW SANDPIPER 



Contributed by Francis Charles Robert Jourdain 

 HABITS 



The curlew sandpiper is only an occasional visitor to America, and 

 with the exception of a single record from Point Barrow all the 

 recorded instances have been reported from the eastern side of the 

 Continent. It has been met with in Canada on two occasions, about 

 ten times in the Eastern States, twice in the West Indies and once in 

 Patagonia. 



Courtship. — Very few observations on this species have been made 

 on its breeding grounds in eastern Siberia, so our information as to 

 its courtship is still very defective. The late Dr. H. Walter, during 

 his enforced detention on the Taimyr Peninsula, from September, 

 1900, to August, 1901, while frozen in on board the exploring ship 

 " Sarja," noted that they arrived on the Peninsula on June 13, and 

 from that date onward were to be met with chasing one another in 

 little parties of three or four over the tundra. There is no mention 

 of any song flight (as in Crocethia alba, Erolia temmdnchii, Ar- 

 quatella marithna, Calidris canutus, etc.). 



Nesting. — The usual nesting place is on the gentle slope of the 

 drier tundra, where the reindeer moss is interspersed with tufts of 

 wiry grass and allowing a wide field of view over the neighborhood. 

 Miss Haviland (1915a) noted that the actual nest hollow was rather 

 deep, so that the pointed ends of the eggs were pointed downwards 

 almost vertically. Walter describes them as shallow depressions, 

 lined with a few dry bents, but H. L. Popham (1898) also remarks 

 that " the nest was a rather deep hollow amongst the reindeer moss in 

 an open space on a ridge of ground, somewhat drier than the sur- 

 rounding swampy tundra, in much the same sort of place as that 

 generally chosen by a grey plover." 



Although Middendorff undoubtedly met with birds about to breed, 

 and indeed extracted a partly developed egg from the oviduct of a 

 female which he had shot on the Boganida River in latitude 74° 

 N"., no one had actually found the nest of this species till Mr. H. 

 Leyborne Popham (1898) visited the lower reaches of the Yenesei 



