282 BULLETIN 146, UNITED STATER NATIONAL MUSEUM 



breedinj^" ; so that in spite of its exposed location the nest is anything but easj' 

 to find. Incubation patches were pi'esent on botli sexes and they did not em- 

 ploy, to lure the intruder from the nesting area, the usual wounded tactics 

 of the other shore birds. 



In the Eastern Hemisphere numerous nests have been found and 

 considerable has been published on the subject, Henry J. Pearson 

 (1904), during his three summers in Russian Lapland, found several 

 nests of the turnstone. On June 13, 1899, on Little Heno Island, he 

 found a nest with four fresh eggs on a low sand spit. " The nest 

 was placed in a patch of dwarf sallow, 10 inches high, and near the 

 edge of a bank, the slight depression being lined with a few dry 

 grasses and dead leaves." Another nest was found on June 27 on 

 Great Heno. After watching the bird in vain for a long time on 

 '' a bare stretch of peat, with scarcely a scrap of vegetation and full 

 of puffin holes," they returned the next day and flushed the turnstone 

 out of a puffin hole; " and there was a nest 18 inches from the mouth, 

 containing three eggs more than half incubated; a few dead sorrel 

 stalks had been taken in to form the nest." ,0n June 19, 1901, on 

 Medveji Island, a nest was found " placed under a large overhang- 

 ing shelf of peat, in such a position that the bird could slip on and 

 off in two different directions according to that from which danger 

 was threatened. The young were formed in the four incubated 

 eggs." He refers to tAvo other nests found on a sand spit, which 

 were " on the open ground with no protection beyond a few blades 

 of grass." 



W. C. Hewitson (1856) found a nest on the coast of Norway on 

 " a flat rock, bare except where here and there grew tufts of grass, 

 or stunted juniper clinging to its surface"; the nest "was placed 

 against a ledge of the rock, and consisted of nothing more than the 

 drooping leaves of the juniper bush, under a creeping branch of vrhich 

 the eggs, four in number, were snugly' concealed." 



A number of nests of the turnstone were found by the Oxford 

 expedition to Spitsbergen, about which A. H. Paget -Wilkes (1922) 

 has given us considerable information. He says that " in spite of 

 the presence of large and small boulders and stones the turnstone in 

 Spitsbergen does not lay its eggs under the shelter of this someAvhat 

 scanty cover or in the small holes or pockets in the soil, but chooses 

 perfectly open and bare, wind-swept places for its breeding sites." 

 Some seven nests were found on islands and one of these is described 

 as " a very flat depression among small stones on a small ridge of 

 dry, red mud." Other nests were scattered along the shore at in- 

 tervals of about three-quarters of a mile; but in one place five or 

 six pairs were nesting within a radius of half a mile. One nest was 

 on a little island of hard mud, only three yards by two yards in 

 a stream. The turnstones are very active and aggressive in defend- 



