228 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



Family CHABADKIID.E. Genus TOTANUS. 



Subfamily TOTANINM. 



WOOD SANDPIPER. 



TOTANUS GLAREOLA - (Linnceus). 



Tringa glareola, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 250 (1766). 



Totanus glareola (Linn.), Macgill. Brit. B. iv. p. 346 (1852) ; Dresser, B. Eur. viii. 



p. 143, pi. 565 (1877) ; Yarrell, Brit. B. ed. 4, iii. p. 463 (1883) ; Seebohm, Hist. 



Brit.B.iii. p. 133 (1885); Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit.B.pt.xxvi. (1893); Dixon, Nests and 



Eggs Brit. B. p. 267 (1893) ; Seebohm, Col. Fig. Eggs Brit. B. p. 138, pi. 42 (1890). 

 Rhyacophilus glareola (Linn.), Sharpe, Handb. B. Gt. Brit. iii. p. 275 (1896); Sharpe, 



Cat. B. Brit. Mus. xxiv. p. 491 (1896). 



Geographical distribution British: The Wood Sandpiper is an 

 irregular straggler on spring and autumn passage, most frequent in the east and 

 south ; occasionally met with inland. It has been several times obtained in Ireland : 

 (Co. Wicklow (one example), August, 1885 ; two more examples, August, 1896; 

 Co. Mayo (one example), September, 1898. It has with certainty been known to 

 breed in the now drained Prestwick Car in Northumberland, and doubtless con- 

 tinues to do so occasionally in Norfolk and other suitable districts without attracting 

 notice. Its eggs are said to have been obtained in the neighbourhood of Elgin, 

 but throughout Scotland it is of much rarer occurrence than in England, but few 

 examples only being recorded from the west the Clyde and Loch Lomond. 

 Foreign : Palsearctic region ; Ethiopian and Oriental regions in winter. It breeds 

 throughout Europe in suitable localities from the valley of the Danube north- 

 wards, but is a straggler only to the Faroes. Eastwards it breeds in Siberia, 

 probably as far north as land extends, and southwards in Turkestan, Mongolia, the 

 north of China, and Kamtschatka. The European birds are well known on pas- 

 sage south of the Danube, and winter in the basin of the Mediterranean, and 

 throughout the African portion of the Intertropical realm. If this species visits 

 South Africa normally we should infer that it breeds there. An example has 

 been obtained on Aldabra Island ; whilst Captain Shelley records a female from 

 Karonga, North Nyasaland, shot in June. The Asiatic birds winter in Persia, 

 Beloochistan, India, Ceylon, the Burmah Peninsula, and the Malay Archipelago, 

 but are known in Japan and South China on passage only. 



Allied forms. Totanus flavipes, the American representative of the 

 Wood Sandpiper, which as- it has occurred in the British Islands will be dealt 

 with fully in the following chapter. 



