GKREEN SANDPIPEE. 373 



bands ; legs ash. grey, only green on the knees ; beak 

 green-brown, with, black tip; tail white, with broad 

 black bands, which are not so apparent on the side 

 eathers; iris dark brown. 



Is very common during the summer, especially in the 

 midland districts, but does not go up into Lapland, where, 

 however, the wood sandpiper is common at that season. 



Morris observes that he is inclined to believe the green 

 sandpipers do not all leave England in the summer, but 

 only are less noticed from their resorting then to the most 

 sequestered spots to breed. Now of all our waders this is 

 the noisiest, and there is little trouble in finding the locality 

 where it breeds, for the old male is always about some brook 

 in the neighbourhood, and I have before noticed that the 

 loud wild cry of the green sandpiper and greenshank are 

 much alike ; but although it is easy enough to know where- 

 abouts the bird is breeding, a man might seek till doomsday 

 for the eggs, if he followed the stereotyped description of, I 

 believe, all our naturalists, and sought for the nest where 

 they tell us, " in sand, on a bank, or among grass by the 

 side of a stream." The fact is, I do not believe any natu- 

 ralist had seen the really authentic egg of this bird until I 

 discovered its breeding habits some few years since. In 

 Sweden the green sandpiper never makes a nest on 

 the ground, like the rest of its congeners, but invariably 

 lays its four pyriform large eggs of a very light ground 

 colour, spotted all over sparingly towards the small end (at 

 the top the spots are much larger, darker, and crowded 

 together), with two shades of purple and umber brown in 

 an old deserted nest of a squirrel, jay, or crow (I once, how- 

 ever, saw them in a new common thrush's nest), in the forest, 

 often far from water, always in a fir tree, sometimes forty 

 feet from the ground. How the old bird takes her young 

 down to the ground I cannot say, but I once found four very 

 small young ones, apparently not a day old, at the foot of a 

 fir, and in the nest I found shells of the eggs still wet inside. 

 196. T. GLAEEOLA, Tern. Gronbent Snappa. The Wood 

 Sandpiper. D. F. 



