COMMON SANDPIPEE. 3 



mile distant. To make my meaning intelligible, however, I should say that the 

 two preceding seasons had been associated with floods that submerged and 

 devastated the low-lying pastures adjacent to the Lugg, and the nests of the 

 Common Sandpiper had not escaped in the general destruction. My theory was 

 that on the principle of ' experience teaches,' and in order to guard against a 

 repetition of such ruthless contingencies, a complete change of habit — for the 

 time being, at all events — had occiurred with regard to the selection of local 

 breeding sites on the part of this species.* 



" On the last day of May, in 1894, I found a nest in a bank by the side of 

 the main road and facing the head-keeper's cottage, which is situated beneath 

 the ruins of Castell Carn Dochan, in Merionethshire. The river Lliw rippled 

 peacefully along some fifty yards distant, and the situation of the nest Avas most 

 exposed, and to my thinking would have admirably suited the requirements of a 

 Redbreast. 



" The favourite materials employed in the construction of the nest are fine 

 dead rushes ; dry grass and a few leaves are not neglected on occasions. The 

 eggs are four in number, the ground-colour ranging between various tints of 

 creamy white and pale buff, and they are mottled, blotched, spotted, and streaked 

 with difierent shades of rufous brown, the underlying markings being of a slate 

 colour. The female has recourse to quaint artifices when her nesting haunts are 

 invaded, and thougli they are instructive to watch as evidence of the protective 

 instinct with which a beneficent Providence has invested the species, it has not 

 been without a pang that I have under the circumstances occasionally possessed 

 myself of a clutch of eggs which at the moment I deemed essentially an acquisition 

 to my collection. 



" I always associate the Common Sandpiper with happy memories of bygone 

 days in North Wales. The many scenes of natural loveliness I have not dwelt 

 upon, nor upon the general nature of the landscape, which difi'ers considerably 

 from the quiet, cultivated beauty to be found elsewliere. Nevertheless, the stern 

 and rugged character of some of the neighbouring hills, the sloping moorlands at 

 a lower level adorned with clustering bracken and heather, and the retired 

 loneliness of much of the country between Llanuwchllyn and Trawsfynydd — all 

 this, I say, renders it an eminently romantic district. Nor must I be unmindful 

 of the part played by the Lliw's slender stream winding peacefully through the 

 various glens and adding a look of life, by its moving Avaters and attendant 

 songsters, to the upland solitudes." 



* [Further evideuce iu support of tbis theory will be found in the late Mr. E. Gray's ' Birds of 

 the West of Scotland,' p. 297.— F. P.] 



2i 



