4 BULLETIN 14 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Mr. Henderson tells me that he thinks he now understands the 

 nesting habits of this species more thoroughly, for he has found 

 five sets of eggs this season, 1927. He says : 



The principal brcoclins place seems to be around small lakes or ponds in 

 muskegs; and the bird they are chiefly associated with is the rusty blackbird, 

 which also breeds among the same surroundings, and whose nests are as suit- 

 able for the solitary sandpiper as are those of the robin. A few breed around 

 lakes and sloughs, away from the muskegs, but the main body is in the muskeg 

 country associated with the i-usty blackbird. 



Egffs.—The solitary sandpiper lays almost invariably four eggs; 

 I believe there is only one set of five recorded. They are ovate 

 pyriform in shape, with a slight gloss, and the shell is very fragile. 

 There are two distinct types of ground color, green and buff. These 

 two types are well illustrated by the Kev. F. C. R. Jourdain (1907) 

 in an excellent colored plate. In the green type the ground colors 

 vary from " pale glaucous green," or " pale turtle green," to greenish 

 white ; and in the buff type, from " cream buff " to " cartridge buff." 

 They are rather thickly spotted and blotched with irregular markings, 

 usually more thickly about the larger end, where the spots are some- 

 times confluent. The underlying spots and blotches in various shades 

 of " purple drab " and " heliotrope gray " are often quite conspicuous. 

 Over these the eggs are boldly marked with dark rich browns, " claret 

 brown," " liver brown," " bay " and " chocolate," or even darker col- 

 ors where the pigment is thickest. One beautiful egg, figured by Mr. 

 Jourdain (1907), has a "pale glaucous green" ground color, with 

 only two blotches of very dark brown near the larger end, heavily 

 splashed elsewhere with "pallid purple drab," and sparingly pep- 

 pered with light brown. The measurements of 68 eggs average 36 

 by 25.5 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 

 38.5 by 27, 33.7 by 23.8 and 36.1 by 23.6 millimeters. 



Plumages. — I have never seen this species in natal down, but Ora 

 W. Knight (1908) says that " the downy young are a general grayish 

 buff above with darker suffusions on the back ; a darker line through 

 each eye from bill to nape; darkish crown line; below white with 

 slight dusky suffusion on flanks." 



Young birds in juvenal plumage are grayish brown above, lighter 

 and more olivaceous than in adults, and thickly spotted with white 

 or buffy white ; the sides of the head and neck are grayish, indistinctly 

 streaked with dusky on the neck. A partial postjuvenal molt occurs 

 in the fall producing a first winter plumage, in which young birds 

 may be distinguished by retained juvenal wing coverts. Young birds 

 are also more profusely spotted on the upper parts and less distinctly 

 streaked on the neck and breast than adults. At the first prenuptial 

 molt, the following spring, the young bird becomes practically adult. 



