THE COMMON SANDPIPER. '49 



familiarly known across the water as " grass-plovers," or " field-plovers," or even 

 " prairie-pigeons." 



Family- S COL OP A CID^E. 



COMMON SANDPIPER. 



Totanus hypoleucus, 



^ I S HE " Summer Snipe," as this bird is often called, is a great ornament to 

 J_ our west and north country burns and lochs during the summer months, 

 and pleasant company to the wandering trout fisherman. It is a bird of wide 

 range, but does not breed much north of the arctic circle, except in Scandinavia, 

 where the Gulf Stream brings a mild temperature not enjoyed by North Russia 

 and Northern Asia. Elsewhere it breeds in suitable localities throughout Europe ; 

 in Persia, probably, the Himalayas, China, and Japan ; in the Canaries and Azores 

 in Africa. Its winter quarters are the whole of Africa, India and Ceylon, Indo- 

 Malaya, and Australasia. It is a bird of powerful and sustained flight, and I met 

 with it in winter in the island of Rodrignes, in 1874, distant three hundred miles 

 of open sea from Mauritius, the nearest land. With us, the Common Sandpiper 

 breeds in hilly districts ; Howard Saunders sums up its breeding range excellently, 

 by stating that west of the Severn (including all Ireland), and north of the Trent, 

 it is well known ; elsewhere in England, a spring and autumn migrant. There is, 

 however, reason to believe that it has bred more than once in Northamptonshire. 

 Description of adult in breeding dress (Northumberland, $, May, 1877, etc.): 

 bill dark brown, lighter at the base ; iris umber ; upper parts hair-brown, with a 

 green or purplish-bronzy sheen in certain lights ; dark shaft-lines to the feathers, 

 becoming, on the back and tertiaries, dark arrow-heads ; wings darker brown, with 

 white tips to the greater coverts ; secondaries have their larger half (the basal), 

 and their tip, white ; tail of the same brown as the back, with white tips to all 



