42 BULLETIN" 14G; UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



lives somewhat akin to tliat of this gentle wanderer. Across the broad ocean 

 it ranges to those bits of paradise dotting the South Seas, tripping its way 

 daintily on the beaches of the coral-enclosed islands, their feet laved by the 

 warm waters of the tropics, and their eyes familiar with the luxuriant face of 

 nature in its gentlest and most lovely state. The next season may find them 

 thousands of miles to the north, under the shadow of the stupendous cliffs 

 and grand but desolate and repellent scenes of the Aleutian Islands. 



Spj-ing.—Proi. Wells W. Cooke (1912) says that "the spring mi- 

 gration begins in March, bringing the birds to the coast of California 

 by the latter part of the month. The Aleutian Islands are reached 

 the middle of May, and the most northern part of the range by the 

 latter part of the month." H. W. Henshaw (1902) says that " about 

 April or May the greater number" leave the Hawaiian Islands for 

 the north. " While most go, many remain, the latter being the im- 

 mature birds and the weaklings. At all events, those that remain 

 retain the immature or winter dress and show not the slightest in- 

 clination to breed." Henry Seebohm (1890) reports a straggler 

 taken on the Bonin Islands on May 11, 1889. D. E. Brown's notes 

 record one at Forrester Island, Alaska, on May 3, 1917, and several 

 at Grays Harbor, Wash., from May 4 to 21, 1920. He says: "At 

 low tide these birds were found, with flocks of black turnstone, on the 

 rock jetty and at high tide among the drift logs on the upper beach." 



Nesting. — The nesting habits of the wandering tattler long re- 

 mained shrouded in mystery. Various observers had seen it on or 

 near its probable breeding grounds in the interior of different parts 

 of Alaska. Dr. Wilfred H. Osgood (1907) collected a very young 

 bird in which " the head and neck were still downy," near the upper 

 MacMillan River, Yukon, on September 5, 1904, and he reported a 

 pair, which evidently had j^oung, seen by Charles Sheldon, near 

 Mount McKinley, July 28, 1906. Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1910) men- 

 tions a " half -grown juvenal " taken by Joseph Dixon on Montague 

 Island, July 28, 1908. 



The first nest was found in 1912 and is thus described in a letter 

 from J. M. Jessup to Dr. Charles W. Richmond, accompanied by a 

 specimen of the bird : 



The wandering tattler was found nesting on a gravel bar near a small 

 stream flowing into the Arctic Ocean, the exact location was about latitude 69° 

 10' and longitude 141° west, or about 25 miles south of the Arctic Ocean 

 near the international boundary between Canada and Alaska. The nest was 

 first observed by Sir Frederick Lambart of the Canadian Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey, and was later identified by myself. Sir Frederick describes the nest 

 as follows: "The nest was situated in the middle of an elevated gravel bar 

 open to the sky for fully 00 feet all around. The nest was just alongside a 

 small rock; there were no sticks or any form of nest material, it consisted 

 merely of a semispherical hollow in dry fine and coarse gravel. Four eggs 

 were in the nest, I should say about the size of a ptarmigan's, brownish blue 

 and mottled very much like a sandpiper's. The young birds were noted to 

 have come out of the eggs July 9." 



