SPOON-BILL SANDPIPER 239 



guardian of the nest descends by raising his wings nearly vertically until 

 they form in anterior outline the letter V. The bird thus gliding on motion- 

 less wings drops lightly but quickly to earth, uttering the zce-e-c in a richer 

 yet more subdued tone. As soon as he touches the earth the song ceases and 

 the silent bird trots quietly off over the moss, where his trim form blends 

 with the lichen and mossy tussocks, so that, upon remaining motionless, lie 

 disappears with amazing rapidity. Time and time again we thus lost sight 

 of the birds, which we later discovered by the aid of binoculars to be standing 

 or squatting motionless within 50 feet of us. Although this " fading out " 

 method of exit is commonly employed by many shore birds, in the case of the 

 spoonbilled sandpiper it seems to have been developed to an extreme degr e. 



Nesting. — To F. E. Kleinschmidt is due the credit for finding the 

 first nest of the spoonbill sandpiper near Cape Serdze, northeastern 

 Siberia, on July 15, 1910. The nest and the four eggs, which were 

 nearly hatched, are now in the collection of Col. John E. Thayer. 

 The following extract from Captain Kleinschmidt's letter in regard 

 to it was published by Colonel Thayer (1911) : 



I was in hopes that I could get five or six clutches of the spoonbills, so I 

 took all kinds of chances with my boat in the ice on the Siberian coast. I 

 found, however, but one set of eggs and they were just ready to hatch. The 

 male is the parent bird of the eggs, but the female belongs to neither eggs nor 

 downies, simply because the habits of this sandpiper are similar to those of 

 the phalarope. The male has to stay at home, keep house, and attend to the 

 young, while the female thinks she has done all that is necessary by merely 

 fulfilling the duties nature demands of her, namely, the laying of the eggs. I 

 shot the female in close proximity of the nest, but we never found a female 

 with the downies. It was always the male. Although our observations were 

 limited to but a few, still I believe the male solely attends to the hatching and 

 the rearing of the young. The female also is larger than the male. The nest 

 as well as the downies were found on the gentle slope of the tundra, bordering 

 small fresh-water ponds. The nest was a rounded hollow in the moss, thickly 

 lined with dry willow leaves. The downies blend so perfectly with the color of 

 the moss that the closest scrutiny will scarcely reveal their hiding place. 



Mr. Dixon (1918) found a nest, with two fresh eggs, near Provi- 

 dence Bay, Siberia, on June 22, 1013, and one, with three young just 

 hatched, near Cape Serdze, on July 17, 1913. Regarding his experi- 

 ence with it, he writes : 



The two nests of this bird that came under the author's observation were 

 discovered through flushing the brooding male. The birds were very shy, and 

 as there was no cover other than a thin growth of grass about G inches high 

 approach by stealth was difficult. The birds usually sneaked off while the 

 observer was 40 or 50 yards distant, and in order to find the nest it was 

 necessary to hide, as best one could, near the place where the sandpiper had 

 flushed, until it returned again to the nest. In one instance a depression partly 

 filled with water was the only available hiding place. Fortunately for the) 

 watcher the water was not cold and the male bird returned in 12 minutes 

 to the nest, which contained two fresh eggs. The nest of this sandpiper was 

 found to be merely a cavity scratched out among the dead grass blades. It 

 was a shallow affair placed where the grass grew thickest. On June 22, 1913, 

 at Providence Bay, the writer witnessed the construction of a nest from a 



