GREEN SANDPIPER. 221 



this bird, but though Mr. Lubbock has recently assured 

 me that he took much pains to sift the case, and has no 

 doubt of the fact; yet with the light recently thrown 

 upon the habits of this sandpiper, one must be allowed to 

 question the actual nesting in the clay-pit,* although it 

 is quite possible that the young birds, reared close by, 

 were taken by the old ones to the clay-pit as a con- 

 venient hiding place. Again, on the 26th of July, 

 1840, Mr. Lubbock observed a small party of six by the 

 side of a small rivulet, which had been previously seen 

 in the same spot on the 23rd. " By creeping (he says) 

 on my hands and knees I obtained a good view of them 

 as they walked about on a mud bank, and believe, 

 from the duller look of the plumage of some, that they 

 were two old birds with a brood of young ones." In 

 some interesting notes on this species, by Mr. L. H. 

 Irby, in the " Zoologist" for 1853 (p. 3988), an adult 

 female is described as killed at Saham, on the 14th of 

 June of that year, "after having been noticed in the 

 vicinity for several days," but even at that late period 

 the breast was not denuded by incubation, " nor were 

 the eggs at all larger than hempseed." Messrs. Shep- 

 pard and Whitear had evidently a strong impression 

 that the nest of the green sandpiper might be discovered 



* I have by no means overlooked the statement of Mr. Hew- 

 itson, in the third edition of his " Eggs of British Birds," that the 

 Rev. H. B. Tristram found fresh eggs of this species in Norway, 

 at the beginning of July, from which the figures in his work were 

 taken, and that one nest is said to have been placed "among 

 grass by the side of a sluggish stream;" the other two "among 

 floe pebbles by the banks of mountain tarns, which had a con- 

 siderable space of muddy shingly shore." These eggs appear to 

 have been taken between Bodo and Quickjock, in Lapland; bufc 

 Mr. Newton, in the paper before quoted, suggests the possibility 

 of a mistake in the assertion, inasmuch as " this particular district 

 has been since visited by three other excellent observers, to no 

 one of whom did the green sandpiper reveal itself." 



