24 BULLETIN 146^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The comi^arison to the trill of the grasshopper warbler seems very 

 far fetched, and would apply far better to the persistent trilling of 

 Temminck's stint. In fact the note reads like a paragraph drafted 

 from filed notes jotted down when the writer was surrounded by 

 singing stints and sandpipers; the metallic and musical song and 

 dashing flight being that of the wood sandpiper and the monotonous 

 trill being that of Temminck's stint. To my ear the Finnish name 

 of the bird, " liro," exactly describes the ringing musical cadence 

 which one hears overhead so frequently by the lake sides and marshes 

 of Sweden and Finland. Buturlin notes the song as peri^ peH, logi^ 

 logi, logi^ and von Droste's translation is also expressive hitkitit- 

 tli-a, tU-a, tU-a, tlia. It is obvious that this bears no likeness what- 

 ever to the monotonous droning note, rising and falling slightly as 

 the bird turns its head, of Locustella naevla. Occasionally the song 

 of the wood sandpiper is uttered while the bird is perched on a 

 bush or in treeless districts even on the ground. 



Nesting. — Although often not concealed with any art, the nest of 

 the wood sandpiper is by no means an easy one to find, as the possible 

 area is so vast, while the sitting bird frequently remains on the eggs 

 imtil almost trodden on. In consequence most nests are discovered 

 by accident, when the bird has been flushed at one's feet, or by long 

 and systematic beating of likely ground in the neighborhood of a 

 singing male. The nest is, however, almost invariably on some slight 

 eminence, a hummock in some cases as much as 2 feet high, though 

 often smaller, and on dry ground, though there may be water within 

 a foot or so. The actual nest is merely a hollow in the ground, lined 

 with bents and grasses and is usually to be found on low-lying 

 ground where willow scrub, heath mosses, and rank grasses furnish 

 a certain amount of cover. This is the normal European site, but 

 H. Leyborne Popham (189T), while collecting on the Yenisei in 1895, 

 found that out of five nests discovered in that season, only one was 

 placed on the ground, while the eggs in the other four cases were 

 laid in the numerous old nests of fieldfares {Turdm pilaris) and 

 other thrushes which were to be seen in gr§at numbers in the trees. 

 In 1900 Mr. Popham (1901) was able to confirm these observations, 

 for in the forest district two more clutches were taken from old 

 thrushes' nests, Avhile at the edge of the tundra two nests were found 

 on the ground. That this habit is not strictly confined to the forest 

 districts of Asia was proved by Lieut. S. A. Davies (1895), who 

 visited the upper waters of the River Muonio on the borders of 

 Finland and Sweden in 1904. He obtained a clutch from an old 

 nest of great grey shrike {Lanius excuhitor excuhltor), placed in the 

 fork of a birch about 20 feet from the ground. A. Cnattingius also 

 found the eggs on one occasion in Sweden in a fieldfare's nest, 8 feet 



