BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 1 67 



71. Actitis macularia (Linn.). 

 Spotted Sandpiper. 



Common summer resident. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 21, 1896, one seen, Arlington, W. Faxon. 



April 26 — September 30. 

 November i, 1903, one seen. Fresh Pond, A. C. Comey. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 25 — June 5. 



The Spotted Sandpiper is common almost everywhere, during the breeding 

 season, throughout the open and cultivated but more thinly settled portions of 

 the Cambridge Region. It nests, as a rule, in barren fields, and in strawberry 

 beds and patches of potatoes or other low-growing vegetables, often at a consid- 

 erable distance from water and always on ground not subject to inundation. A 

 picturesque, rocky island which formerly existed in the upper mill-pond at Wa- 

 verley, in what is now the Beaver Brook Reservation, was once sure to harbor a 

 breeding pair, and within the past few years several birds have nested regularly in 

 the clay-pits at the eastern end of the Fresh Pond Swamps. 



As soon as the young Spotted Sandpipers are able to fly, they, with their 

 parents, resort to the margins of our larger ponds and to the salt marshes and 

 tidal creeks along Charles River. They used to frequent the Cambridgeport 

 and Longfellow Marshes in considerable numbers in July and August, and they 

 continue to be seen frequently during these months, as well as in late April and 

 early May, about the shores of Fresh, Spy, and the Mystic Ponds. 



72. Oxyechus vociferus (Linn.). 



KiLLDEER. 

 Rare transient visitor in spring and autumn and very rare summer resident. 

 Mr. Outram Bangs tells me that he used to find Killdeer about the Back 



