GREEN SANDPIPER. 643 



our Common Sandpiper. Their food consists of worms and 

 insects, and their note is a shrill whistle, whence it is by 

 some called the Whistling Sandpiper. Colonel Sykes says 

 the note resembles the word cheet, cheet, cheet. 



The Rev. Richard Lubbock sent me several notices 

 of the habits of this bird in Norfolk, from which the fol- 

 lowing are extracts : " Sir Thomas Beevor told me that 

 one of these Sandpipers built in a hollow on the side of 

 a clay-pit upon his estate, in the autumn of 1839, and 

 hatched four young, which, to his vexation, were taken 

 by a shepherd's boy. They are common during summer 

 and autumn upon a small stream which runs through his 

 property near Attleburgh. I have noted this bird as 

 observed at the end of October, 1824, on the 23rd of 

 December, 1832, and the 9th of December, 1836. I 

 killed a specimen in most severe weather on the 4th of 

 January, 1837, deep snow on the ground, and all the 

 Snipes driven out of the country by stress of weather. 

 This Sandpiper has probably the loudest note, for its size, 

 of any of our fen birds." In a letter, received on the 

 15th of September, 1840, this gentleman says, " After 

 observing these birds about the neighbouring streams for 

 several seasons continuously, I am nearly certain that they 

 remain here all the year, with the exception of that period 

 in spring and early summer, during which they withdraw 

 to hatch and rear their young. I have shot them in ex- 

 treme frosty weather, and have always seen one here and 

 there during the Snipe shooting in March, but the llth 

 of April is the latest time in spring at which I have ob- 

 served them. This year I requested my nephew, who is 

 often about the rivulet looking for fish, to let me know as 

 soon as he perceived their return. On the 23rd of July 

 he told me that he had seen six together, and on the 26th 

 of the same month I found them near the place he had 



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