GREEN .SANDPIPER, 



)29 



served wlien running, to spread and flirt the tail up like our 

 Common Sandpiper. Their food consists of worms and in- 

 sects, and their note is a shrill whistle, whence it is by some 

 called the Whistling Sandpiper. Colonel Sykes says the 

 note resembles the word cheet, cheet, cheet. 



The Rev. Richard Lubbock has sent me several notices of 

 the habits of this bird in Norfolk, from which the following 

 are extracts. " Sir Thomas Beevor, told me that one of 

 these Sandpipers built in a hollow on the side of a clay-pit 

 upon his estate, in the autumn of 1829, and hatched four 

 young, "which, to his vexation, were taken by a shepherd's 

 boy. They are common during summer and autumn upon 

 a small stream which runs through his property near Attle- 

 burgh. I have noted this bird as observed at the end of Oc- 

 tober 1824, on the twenty-third of December 1832, and the 

 ninth of December, 1836. I killed a specimen in most 

 severe weather on the fourth of January, 1837, deep snow- 

 on the ground, and all the snipes driven out of the country 

 by stress of weather. This Sandpiper has probably the loud- 

 est note, for its size, of any of our fen birds." In a letter, 

 received on the fifteenth of September last, 1840, this gen- 

 tleman says, " after observing these birds about the neigh- 

 bouring streams for several seasons continuously, I am nearly 

 certain that they remain here all the year, with the exception 

 of that period in spring and early summer, during which they 

 withdraw to hatch and rear their young. I have shot them 

 in extreme frosty weather, and have always seen one here and 

 there during the Snipe shooting, in March, but the eleventh 

 of April is the latest time in spring at Avhich I have observed 

 them. This year I requested my nephew, who is often about 

 the rivulet looking for fish, to let me know as soon as he per- 

 ceived their return. On the twenty-third of July he told me 

 that he had seen six together, and on the twenty-sixth of the 

 same month I found them near the place he had mentioned. 



VOL. II. 2 M 



