914 TRINGA TEMMINCKI. 
§ 3974. Four.—Muonioniska, 24 June, 1853. “J. W.” 
These four eggs are the first I ever heard of attributed to this 
bird. They were found on the 23rd and taken on the 24th of June, 
just between the water and a group of houses below the church. 
Some children ran up to me with the eggs when I had passed the 
place in a boat. The father of one of them had found the nest 
the day before, as he left his boat for the house just above. The 
fourth egg, they told me, had (translated [from Finnish] into 
Swedish) ‘‘ gone asunder.” The first thing was to enquire for this 
fourth egg. They took me back several hundred yards, and there 
stood in a group round the broken egg lying im the footpath. I 
then gave the child a fourth bit of silver, in addition to the other 
three bits. Next they were to shew me the nest. It was made up 
of a few last year’s leaves in a depression, scraped in the level grass, 
about thirty-five paces from the water’s edge, and perhaps twice as 
many from the houses, also not far from a stack of firewood. At 
this spot, or perhaps nearer to the water’s edge, on the 12th of June 
I had searched for the nest and watched the birds for some hours, at 
which time probably the eggs were not laid, for they had been only 
a day or two sat upon on the 24th. The birds came close to us on 
that occasion, and even allowed a man to walk within two or three 
feet of them as they sat upon the firewood, so that both with and 
without my glass I examined them carefully. They were decidedly 
of the same species as the bird I had shot at Niemi and elsewhere 
down the river, which appears to be the same as that from 
Haparanda, in the Stockholm Museum, labelled “ Tringa Temminckii.” 
Besides, their manner and notes were exactly like those of the bird 
whose skin I have. They uttered an incessant trilling note, coming 
hovering over us for several minutes together: their flight rather 
like that of a Sand-Martin. Every now and then they disappeared 
upon the ground, running after gnats among the grass. At that 
time I called many persons from the houses above to look at them, 
and offered the reward of a dollar for their eggs. 
When I first met with this species at Niemi, it was with 
great surprise that I heard and saw it trilling and twittering 
upon a projecting piece of wood on the roof of a building. After- 
wards below the gédstgifverigard [inn], one came up flitting and 
hovering, and sat trilling upon a large stone. This was the first 
IT shot. Some days later I saw several together, exceedingly 
tame, so that the boatmen struck at them with their poles; 
