OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 255 



further north and east it is at least a month later. Its breeding grounds are rarely 

 far from the sea, either in the immediate neighbourhood of the beach amongst 

 broken ground covered with scanty herbage, or in marshy districts at the summit 

 of adjoining hills. In the Faroes both Wolley and Captain Feilden found it 

 nesting on the fells, the latter observer taking its eggs before the snow had 

 melted from the sheltered hollows and the tops of the hills. The Purple Sand- 

 piper, if it does not actually pair for life, seems much attached to its nesting 

 place, and appears yearly to frequent the same spot. Wolley had the eggs for 

 two successive years from a nest made on the same piece of ground on which a 

 colony of Skuas were breeding. The nest of the Purple Sandpiper, like that of most 

 Waders, is merely a hollow in the ground, lined with a few dry bits of vegetable 

 refuse, such as moss and grass. The eggs are four in number, and vary in 

 ground-colour from pale olive to huffish-brown, very handsomely spotted and 

 blotched, mottled and streaked with dark blackish-brown, reddish-brown, and 

 with numerous and well-defined underlying markings of pale brown and violet- 

 grey. They are pyriform, and measure on an average 1'5 inch in length by 

 1'05 inch in breadth. Both parents assist in the duties of incubation, and one 

 brood only is reared in the year. Sometimes the sitting bird remains brooding 

 on the eggs when just about to hatch until nearly trodden upon, and then 

 hurriedly rises and begins to feign lameness to allure the intruder away. In spite 

 of the fact that this species often breeds at some distance from the sea, the birds 

 appear always to come to the coast to feed. 



Diagnostic characters. Tringa, with the rump and upper tail coverts 

 nearly black, and the seventh to the ninth secondaries nearly white. Length, 

 8 inches. 



