BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 141 



feathers strongly tinged with ashy; others spotted with dark 

 ashy-brown; bill dark bluish-brown, lighter at the base; legs 

 light blue; iris brown. 



Length, 15; wing, 8.25; tail, 3.25; bill, 2.50; tarsus, 2.50. 



Habitat, Temperate North America. 



BARTRAMIA LONGICAUDA (Bechstein). (261.) 

 BARTRAMIAN SANDPIPER. 



Sub-common and resident. Arrives the first week in April in 

 small parties when they are found on the open pastures on dry 

 knolls, after the manner of the plovers. Its habits in these 

 respects confound it with the other species mentioned, hence 

 the popular name of Upland Plover. Sometimes for a short 

 time following their arrival they seem quite common, but by 

 the 10th of May they are manifestly diminishing in numbers, 

 and by the 25th only those which ajre to breed here are left, the 

 others having mostly passed on further north, and those re- 

 maining having paired, enter upon the structure of their nests 

 and depositing their eggs, which are three to four in number, 

 and vary exceedingly in the shades of color from creamy drab 

 to pure buif, between which are all gradations of those two 

 colors They are spotted with different degrees of brown and 

 almost obsolete lilac. Few of the Wading Birds have so wide 

 a range of choice of location for their nest. One many years 

 since was in a closely grazed pasture near a rice marsh in the 

 northwestern part of the city in which I am writing, and was 

 a mere excuse for a structure of the kind, consisting of a pinch 

 of grass blades loosely strung around a slight depression in 

 the ground and partially under a tuft of rank grass where the 

 offal of the preceding year had made the cattle refuse to crop 

 it. Another discovered a few years later, with an incomplete 

 complement of eggs, was on the sandy, high plains west of 

 Fort Snelling, and had no covert, and still less grass distribu- 

 ted around the depression in the ground. 



Competent observers assure me that they more commonly 

 build close to the hills of corn in the cornfields, where the in- 

 cidental protection leaves them less apparent motive to seek 

 concealment, yet the nest is much more bulky with grass and 

 weeds. Their food, as indicated by the contents of their crops 

 at this time in the year, consists chiefly of crickets, grasshop- 

 pers, small beetles and seeds of different kinds. These kinds 

 of food are abundant at that time of the year. 



