CHARADRIIDiE. 



605 





THE COMMON SANDPIPER. 



ToTANUs HYPOLEUCUS (Linnceus). 



This species, often called the Summer-Snipe, is a regular visitor 

 to the British Islands, usually appearing in April and leaving again 

 by the end of September, though a few birds occasionally remain 

 till November. Inasmuch as its favourite haunts are the gravelly 

 margins of lakes or islets of shingle in running water, this Sandpiper 

 is chiefly a migrant in the south-east of England ; but exceptionally 

 it has nested in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, Kent, 

 Sussex, and Dorset, and more freely along the moorland brooks of 

 Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. In Wales, and in fact west of the 

 Severn and north of the Trent, it is a well-known breeding-bird ; while 

 in Scotland it is to be found on almost every loch and burn throughout 

 the mainland, ranging to the Outer Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands. 

 It is generally distributed in Ireland, except in the south-east. 



In summer this Sandpiper is plentiful from the Arctic circle down 

 to the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, and the mountains of Turkey 

 and Greece, while it visits Madeira, and breeds— sparingly— in the 

 Canaries, Spain, and the Mediterranean basin. In the last, how- 

 ever, the species is better known in winter, at which season it 

 ascends the Nile valley to Abyssinia, and can be traced along the 

 entire coast-line of Africa, as well as to Madagascar &c. In Asia, 

 where it is found from the Arctic circle southwards, it crosses the great 



