61 



SCHINZ'S SANDPIPER AND THE DUNLIN. 



(Reprinted from " The Field" Newspaper, Jan. 28th, 1865. 



IN the letter from " An Old Bushman," in The Field of January 

 9th, on the subject of forming collections of birds' eggs, he says, 

 he hardly believes these are different species. TVill he be so 

 good as to give those of your readers who amuse themselves with 

 Natural History, further information as to his doubts. The 

 former has been so very rarely met with in England, that it is 

 not possible to investigate its changes of plumage and general 

 habits. The few I have seen (all Americans) seemed considera- 

 bly smaller than the Dunlin, slighter in shape, the beak much 

 shorter in proportion, and, in fact, the bird appeared almost in- 

 termediate between it and the Little Stint. Perhaps he will 

 tell us whether the former, in its summer plumage, acquires a 

 black breast, as the latter always does. Schinz's Sandpiper ap- 

 pears to be an American bird ; the Dunlin (if the American and 

 European races, or whatever they may be, are the same species) 

 seems to be equally distributed on both continents, the Ameri- 

 cans that I have seen being similar in marking to our own, but 

 considerably larger. If Schinz's Sandpiper and the Dunlin are 

 the same species, one would expect to find the former resemble 

 the American Dunlins in size, and not be less than the European 

 birds. Probably the breeding districts of Schinz's Sandpiper 

 will commence further north than where those of the Dunlin 

 terminate : the breeding districts of many of these tribes of birds, 

 although comparatively speaking unknown to us, must extend 

 over immense tracts of country, or whence come the clouds which 

 are found of many of them, from our own shores, even to those 

 of India ? The great difficulty in proving the migrations of birds 

 seems to be the impossibility of knowing whether the individuals 

 found at a place at one season are the same as those found at any 

 other place at a different season, particularly as we do not even 

 know that their migrations are confined to north and south ; and 

 I cannot see what prospect there is of solving the question satis- 

 factorily. Much less attention has been paid to the migrations 



