2 SCOLOPACID.E. 



their first arrival they were absurdly tame, allowing us to approach Avithin a 

 few yards of them, as they frequented the pools formed by the rapidly melting 

 snow in the streets of the town of Ust Zylma. A week later we found them very 

 common at Haberiki, thirty miles further north. They were feeding on the edges 

 of the marshes and the little forest tarns ; and after we had shot one of them 

 from the summit of a dead larch tree, between sixty and seventy feet from the 

 ground, we became more reconciled to the name of Wood-Sandpiper. They 

 were excessively tame and were in full song. The note which the male utters 

 during the pairing-season is much more of a song than tliat of the Grasshopper 

 Warbler, Avhich it somewhat resembles; it is a monotonous til-il-il, begun 

 somewhat low and slow, as the bird is descending in the air with fluttering 

 upraised wings, becoming louder and more rapid, and reaching its climax as 

 the bird alights on the ground or on a rail, or sometimes on the bare branch of 

 a willow, the points of its trembling wings almost meeting over its head when its 

 feet find support. This song is a by no means unmusical trill, and has an almost 

 metallic ring about it. The alarm-note of the Wood-Sandpiper is somewhat 

 like the f/jii, tt/il, of the Redshank, but much softer. With the exception of 

 Temminck's Stint, the Wood-Sandpiper was the commonest wader in the valley of 

 the Yenesay ; and in the valley of the Obb I found it equally common, feeding 

 on the banks of the river in company with Common and Green Sandpipers. 



" The nest of the Wood-Sandpiper is very difficult to find, and is generally 

 discovered by accident in consequence of the female, who is a somewhat close 

 sitter, flying off", and thus revealing the place Avhere her eggs are concealed. This 

 is generally in open country, not absolutely on swampy ground, but seldom very 

 far from it: a patch of dry ground, overgrown with heath, sedges, and coarse 

 grasses, is generally selected, frequently not far from a few stunted willow bushes, 

 on which the bird not unfrequently alights. The nest itself is a mere hollow in 

 the ground, lined with a few dry stalks and blades of grass. Captain Elwes and 

 I found the Wood-Sandpiper not uncommon on the moors and swamps near 

 Tarm, on the west coast of Jutland, in 1S80. We took a nest of this bird 

 containing four eggs on the 17th of May, on a moor within a mile of the village. 

 When I was at Valconsvaard in 1876 I obtained two nests of this bird — one on 

 the 14th and the other on the 23rd of May 



" The eggs of the Wood-Sandpiper vary in ground-colour from creamy Avhite 

 to drill buff" and very pale olive, and are very handsomely spotted and blotched 

 with rich reddish brown. The spots vary in size from a pea downwards, and in 

 the widest part of the egg are often confluent. Occasionallv the spots are evenly 

 distributed over the egg, but at the smaller end tliey are generally less and more 



