128 BRITISH BIRDS. 



not known that it ever builds a nest. Sometimes its eggs are placed in 

 the fork of a tree-trunk — on the leaves, or lichens and moss, which may 

 have accumulated there ; more often the old nest of a Song-Thrush or 

 Missel-Thrush is chosen; and in Siberia I have taken the eggs from the 

 old nest of a Fieldfare in a willow tree, six feet from the ground. Old 

 dreys of the squirrel, the forsaken nests of the Ring-Dove, Jay, Red-backed 

 Shrike, and even old Crows' nests have all been known to be used as 

 nesting-places by the Green Sandpiper. 



It is only comparatively recently that this extraordinary habit of the 

 Green Sandpiper has become known. Naumann admits that he never had 

 the good fortune to find a nest of this species, and does not seem to have 

 suspected that it laid its eggs in trees; but as long ago as 1847 my good 

 friend Homeycr, of Stolp, sent Thienemann eggs of the Green Sandpiper 

 which he had himself taken out of an old Blackbird's nest in a juniper 

 bush in Pomerania. The foresters in this district had long been acquainted 

 with the curious breeding-habits of this bird, and Forstmeister Hintz 

 (Journ. Orn. 18G2, p. 460) published the particulars of numerous nests 

 that he had taken from 1818 to 1862. I have myself seen the Green 

 Sandpiper in the same district, where Forstinspector Wiese climbed thirty 

 feet up a pine tree to take his first nest of this bird in 1846 (Journ. 

 Orn. 1855, p. 514). On the 30th of May, 1882, as I was walking in a 

 forest, about twenty miles south of Stolp, with my friend Dr. Holland, 

 we passed a small swamp where a Green Sandpiper attracted our attention 

 by its loud cries. A few stunted larches and alder bushes still grew in 

 the swamp, and the bird flew from branch to branch and bush to bush in 

 the most excited manner, having, no doubt, young for Avhose safety it was 

 so anxious. Hintz says that he has known the nest in a hole in a fallen 

 tree-trunk, on the stump of a felled or broken-down tree, but most com- 

 monly in old nests from three to tAvelve feet from the ground, though on 

 one occasion he took the eggs from an old squirrel's nest in a birch tree 

 as high as thirty feet. Four is the full clutch of eggs, which vary in 

 ground-colour from creamy white to white with the faintest tinge of olive 

 on the one hand, and to very pale reddish brown on the other. The surface- 

 spots are dark reddish brown, generally most numerous on the large end of 

 the egg, and seldom larger than no. 4 shot ; the underlying markings 

 are similar in size and distribution, but are pale greyish brown in colour. 

 They vary in length from 1*6 to I'S inch, and in breadth from 1-15 to 

 1'05 inch. In general appearance they most nearly resemble eggs of 

 Bartram's Sandpiper and the Common Sandpiper, between which they are 

 intermediate in size. 



The adult male Green Sandpiper in full breeding-plumage has the 

 general colour of the upper parts dull olive-brown, streaked on the head 

 and neck with white, and spotted with white on the mantle, scapulars, and 



