158 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
The young are able to leave the nest by the roth of July. The 
number reared in a nest is four or five. They follow their parents 
until they assume the winter plumage, in the latter part of August 
or September or even later. (Z7urner.) 
MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 
Two specimens taken by Mr. J. M. Macoun in Behring Sea in 
1891—one on St. Matthew Island and the other on Unimak Island. 
237. Thick-billed Sandpiper. Prybiloff Sandpiper. 
Tringa ptilocenemis Cours. 1873. 
Mr. H. W. Elliott, the discoverer of this species, speaking of its 
range, says that besides the Prybiloff Islands, he found it just as 
abundantly on St. Matthew Islandin 1874, 200 miles to the north, 
where it was breeding in large numbers as it does on the 
Prybiloffs. A single pair was found nesting (by myself) on the 
south shore of St. Lawrence Island in June, 1881. Krause, in winter, 
secured three specimens at Portage Bay, which is on the main- 
land near the end of Chilcat Peninsula, but saw no large flocks 
until April, so that it is probable they winter south along the 
coast of Alaska and possibly British Columbia. (Ve/son.) 
BREEDING NotrEs.—I may say that this is the only wader that 
incubates on the Prybiloff Islands, with the marked exceptions of 
a stray couple now and then of Phalaropus hyperboreus. It makes 
its appearance early in May and repairs to the dry uplands and 
mossy hummocks, where it breeds. The nest is formed by the 
selection of a particular cryptogamic bunch. It lays four darkly- 
blotched pyriform eggs, and hatches them within twenty days. 
The young come from the shell in a thick, yellowish down, with 
dark-brown markings on the head and back, getting the plumage 
of their parents and taking to wing as early as the 1oth of August. 
(Elliott) 
MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 
One pair taken on St. Lawrence Island, Behring Sea, by Mr. 
J. M. Macoun, on August 12th, 1891. 
238. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. 
Tringa acuminata (HoRsr.) SWwIinH. 1863. 
On September 16th, 1877, near St. Michael, I had the pleasure of 
securing a handsome young female of this bird, thus adding this 
