GREEN SANDPIPER. 221 
this bird, but though Mr. Lubbock has recently assured 
me that he took much pains to sift the case, and has no 
doubt of the fact; yet with the light recently thrown 
upon the habits of this sandpiper, one must be allowed to 
question the actual nesting in the clay-pit,* although it 
is quite possible that the young birds, reared close by, 
were taken by the old ones to the clay-pit as a con- 
venient hiding place. Again, on the 26th of July, 
1840, Mr. Lubbock observed a small party of six by the 
side of a small rivulet, which had been previously seen 
in the same spot on the 23rd. “ By creeping (he says) 
on my hands and knees I obtained a good view of them 
as they walked about on a mud bank, and _ believe, 
from the duller look of the plumage of some, that they 
were two old birds with a brood of young ones.” In 
some interesting notes on this species, by Mr. L. H. 
Irby, in the “ Zoologist” for 1853 (p. 3988), an adult 
female is described as killed at Saham, on the 14th of 
June of that year, “after having been noticed in the 
vicinity for several days,” but even at that late period 
the breast was not denuded by incubation, “ nor were 
the eggs at all larger than hempseed.” Messrs. Shep- 
pard and Whitear had evidently a strong impression 
that the nest of the green sandpiper might be discovered 
* T have by no means overlooked the statement of Mr. Hew- 
itson, in the third edition of his ‘ Eggs of British Birds,” that the 
Rey. H. B. Tristram found fresh eggs of this species in Norway, 
at the beginning of July, from which the figures in his work were 
taken, and that one nest is said to have been placed “among 
grass by the side of a sluggish stream ;” the other two “among 
fine pebbles by the banks of mountain tarns, which had a con- 
siderable space of muddy shingly shore.” These eggs appear to 
have been taken between Bodé and Quickjock, in Lapland; but 
Mr. Newton, in the paper before quoted, suggests the possibility 
of a mistake in the assertion, inasmuch as “this particular district 
has been since visited by three other excellent observers, to no 
one of whom did the green sandpiper reveal itself.” 
