496 SANDPIPERS AND RELATED SPECIES 



commencing about the end of the first week in April, and migra- 

 tion may continue up to the end of May or even later. The 

 late arrivals are probably but not necessarily birds of passage to 

 more northern nesting-places, possibly in Scandinavia, where they 

 reach their most northern limit ; in fact nowhere else are they known 

 to breed north of the Arctic Circle. It is not clear to what extent the 

 common-sandpiper is a gregarious migrant. At any rate the flocks 

 are not large, and they appear to break up directly they arrive, the 

 birds repairing singly or in pairs to their nesting-places. These 

 extend from the extreme south, or rather south-west for the south- 

 eastern counties are not suitable to the most northern of the British 

 Isles. Its favourite haunts are the shingle beaches and islands of 

 mountain and hill streams, whether good-sized rivers or tiny burns ; 

 also the shores of lakes and Highland lochs. 



Pairing takes place almost as soon as the birds arrive in their 

 nesting-places ; so soon, in fact, as to suggest that they pair for life, 

 and either arrive in pairs or join each other at the old haunts. The 

 usual call-note is thin and shrill but not unmusical. It has been vari- 

 ously rendered as "wheet, wheet, wheet," 1 "weet-wince" 2 " whee-whee-wheet" 3 

 or "di, di, di" 4 The alarm-note, when the young are in danger, has been 

 described as a long-drawn " twee-twee," followed by several short notes 

 repeated rapidly, " tu tu twee tu, tu tu twee tu" 5 Naumann describes the 

 ordinary note used by both sexes, and by the young as soon as they are 

 fledged, as "hididi, hididi" and the courting-song of the male, which he 

 says is uttered only on the wing during a zigzag flight never when 

 sitting as " titihidi, titihidi.'" 6 This song is described by Dresser as the 

 three syllables of the call-note " di di di " somewhat modulated, 7 and Mr. 

 Owen R. Owen, who has spent many years among sandpipers in Radnor- 

 shire, gives, in my opinion, a truer rendering of the same notes as 



1 Howard Saunders, Manual of British Birds, p. 604. 



2 Seebohm, British Birds, iii. p. 118. 3 Patten, Aquatic Birds, p. 329. 

 4 Dresser, Birds of Europe, viii. p. 132. 



6 Seton P. Gordon, Birds of Loch and Mountain, p. 91. Vogel Mitteleuropas, ix. p. 8. 



7 Dresser, op. cit., p. 182. 



