GREEN SAND-PIPER. 123 
familiar of all our birds to me in my youth. Many long days 
have I spent amid the haunts on the Essex Saltings. Their 
nests are very slightly constructed of a few bits of grass amidst a 
tuft of herbage, or in a small hole or cavity which is sheltered by 
some of the taller-growing marine plants. The eggs are usually 
four in number, occasionally but two or three, of a cream-colour 
(sometimes dashed with a somewhat warmer hue) spotted and 
‘speckled with dark brown. The spots are less and more nume- 
rous than in the case of the Peewit’s egg. In the case of the 
last nest I found, about two years since, the old bird suffered me 
to walk within a yard of her before taking flight. When the 
young are newly hatched the parent birds betray excessive jea- 
lousy and anxiety at the approach of either man or dog to their 
resort. They have sometimes come and settled on the ground 
within two or three paces of me, and, at others, flown so directly 
towards me, as to suggest the possible intention of attacking me, 
piping most plaintively and incessantly the while. This conduct 
is designated by the term “mobbing,” on the Essex marshes. 
Fig. 4, plate VIII. 
193. GREEN SAND-PIPER—(Totanus ochropus). 
It is supposed that a few of these birds may remain with us 
to breed; but far the greater part of those which are customa- 
rily seen about the sides of our smaller streams and ditches and 
canals, are known to return far to the north to produce their 
eges and young. I believe no authenticated instances of its 
nesting with us are known, but a few very young birds have been 
met with under circumstances which seemed to leave no doubt 
that they must have been hatched in the neighbourhood. The 
nest is said to be placed ‘on a bank, or among grass, on the side 
of a stream,” and the eggs, four in number, to be of a greenish 
