GKEElSr SANDPIPER 19 



Like the greenshank, the green sandpiper has a great attachment 

 to certain localities and in some cases the identical nest has been used 

 for two consecutive seasons. In a district where the birds are not 

 scarce, this naturally renders the discovery of the nest much more 

 simple to the resident, and explains the success of Forester Hintz 

 and others in discovering the eggs. Very little in the way of addi- 

 tion appears to be made by the sandpipers to their adopted home 

 and the pine needles which are noted in the interior of old thrushes' 

 nests may well have dropped from the adjacent trees in the ordinary 

 way. 



Eggs. — These are normally four in number, pyriform in shape, 

 rather thin shelled and, as compared with those of the wood sand- 

 piper, generally large and pale in coloring, showing more of the 

 ground colors and fewer markings. The ground color varies from 

 some shade of pale greenish or greenish grey to warm creamy, 

 huffish stone color and light yellowish red. The markings are 

 generally rather fine and in the reddish eggs are rich purplish brown, 

 shading into very dark brown, while in the greenish eggs the}^ are 

 generally less reddish and more purplish in tone. Numerous fine 

 speckles are characteristic and there are generally also some under- 

 Ijang shell marks of violet or ashy. The measurements of 100 eggs 

 average 39.11 by 28.04 millimeters; the eggs showing the four 

 extremes measure 42 by 28, 41.1 by 30.3, 34.6 by 26, and 34.8 by 25.7 

 millimeters. 



Young. — As to the shares of the sexes in incubation, there are 

 references to females shot from the nest and males on guard in 

 the neighborhood, but how far this has been confirmed by dissec- 

 tion and how much is surmise it is not easy to say. The incubation 

 period is also unknown. When the j^oung are hatched their stay 

 in the nest is very short. Besides Hintz's observation, quoted above, 

 of recently hatched young jumping from the nest into the grass on 

 his approach. Wheel v/right also found on one occasion four very 

 small young, apparently not a day old, at the foot of a fir, while 

 in the nest overhead were the empty shells, still wet inside. In 

 this case the early abandonment of the nest was not due to human 

 interference. On another occasion Hintz found three young and a 

 chipped egg in a squirrel's drey about 30 feet up in a birch. The 

 3'oung birds sprang from the nest and alighted on the ground v/ith- 

 out injuring themselves, concealing themselves at once among the 

 grass. 



Pluiyiages. — The molts and plumages are fully described in A 

 Practical Handbook of British Birds, edited by H. F. Witherby 

 (1920), to which the reader is referred. 



Food. — The main food of this species consists of insects, espe- 

 cially small coleoptera and their larvae, but larval forms of other 



