TOTANUS OCHROPUS. 17 
mentioned that he had, through the Oberforster Wiese, obtained an egg of Totanus 
glareola, with the remark that this species ‘ nested upon trees”; but in the same 
periodical for 1852 (Hefti. p. 95) he stated that Herr Eugen F. Homeyer had 
informed him that the egg in question was not that of 7. glareola but of T. ochropus, 
and added that during his stay at the Haff, in Pomerania, he had seen many 
nesting-places of the latter, which were on the borders of Elsenbriiche '—alder- 
swamps, in the middle of the forest, where the trees stand upon hillocks. In the 
‘ Journal fiir Ornithologie’ for 1855 (p. 514), writing on the birds of Pomerania, 
this same Herr Wiese (grown to be a Forstinspektor) stated that he had heard from 
an old Jiéger that this species laid in Thrushes’ nests, but naturally did not believe 
his informant. However, some time after, in 1845, he obtained from the same 
man four of its eggs, from a nest in a beech-tree, and next year he himself had the 
pleasure of finding a nest with four eggs in a pine-tree some twenty-five or thirty 
feet from the ground. Similar evidence was offered in ‘Naumannia’ for 1856 
(p. 84) by Dr. Altum, and that magazine for the next year contains a valuable 
series of observations on the birds of Western Pomerania by the Forester Hintz I., 
in which he said (p. 14) that in May, 1855, he found three eggs of 7. ochropus on 
an alder-tree in an old nest which he thought was a Dove’s, though it might have 
been a Jay’s. Formerly, he added, he had only observed this Sandpiper to breed 
in old nests of the Song-Thrush. Not long after appeared the fourth part of 
Herr Badeker’s ‘Kier der Europaischen Vogel,’ treating of this bird (pl. xxx. 
no. 5), wherein a brief and imperfect statement to the foregoing effect was given, 
and a notice of this in ‘ The Ibis’ for 1859 (p. 405) first made known the curious 
facts to English readers. In 1860, Mr. Wheelwright, writing in ‘The Field’ 
newspaper * of 18 August (p. 146), under his well-known pseudonym of “The Old 
Bushman,” described his own experience in Sweden, which was precisely similar. 
The then natural-history editor of that paper (the late Mr. Edward Newman), 
not knowing of the German evidence, expressed his scepticism on this subject, 
whereupon Mr. Wheelwright reiterated his statement (Field, 15 Sept. p. 228, and 
10 Noy. p. 393), saying that “there is no doubt about the matter,” and added 
that he “ never took the nest on the ground’’*. A further most interesting com- 
munication was made by Herr Hintz to the ‘ Journal fiir Ornithologie’ for 1862 
1 (I originally mistranslated this phrase, and now correct the mistake.—ED. ] 
2 (To Mr, Harting I am indebted for some of the references to ‘ The Field.’ 
—Ep.] 
° [The assurance was of course accepted by Mr. Newman, who briefly mentioned 
the facts in an article in‘The Field’ of 9 December, 1865 (p. 425), of which a 
translation appeared in the ‘Svenska Jagarférbundets Nya Tidskrift’ for 1866 
(pp. 84-89), and seems to have been the first publication of this peculiar habit in 
Scandinavia, though the Editor of that journal added in a footnote (p. 86) that it 
had been before observed in Sweden—several times by the Jigmiaster Lundborg, 
who on one occasion at least obtained eggs of Totanus ochropus from a nest 
apparently a Squirrel’s. This was referred to by Herr Westerlund in 1867 
(Skandinavisk Oologi, p. 201) and in 1870 by Herr Holmgren (Handbok i Zoologi,— 
Skandinaviens Foglar, ii. p. 81), since when it has no doubt become generally 
known, though Mr. Wheelwright’s connexion with it and that of Herr Hogdahl 
(of which more presently) have been ignored.—L. | 
