THE GREEN SANDPIPER. J 5S 



wing-coverts with a few small whitish spots ; tertiaries and scapulars with pairs 

 of marginal white spots, giving the back a speckled appearance; primaries and 

 secondaries black-brown, with no white shafts; rump and upper tail-coverts white; 

 tail white, with four bold dark brown bars (one forming a tip) to the central 

 feathers, decreasing to one spot on the outer pair; a white eye-brow reaching 

 from the bill, with a dusky eye-stripe below it, passing through the eye to the 

 ear-coverts ; sides of face and neck white, spotted with dusky brown ; chin and 

 upper throat white ; rest of throat and upper breast dusky, with dark shaft-stripes 

 widening at the tips into spots ; breast and belly white ; axillaries sooty-black, 

 narrowly and regularly barred with white; legs and feet greenish- grey. Length 

 nearly 10 inches ; closed wing 5 J to 5f . 



Adults in winter have almost or entirely lost the light spots on the back, and 

 their colours generally are duller. 



Young in autumn are a good deal smaller, and have very much spotted upper 

 parts as in the summer dress, but the spots are buff, not white, and there are a 

 few round buff spots on the crown ; a tinge of buff pervades the ends of the 

 central tail feathers; length 8j to 8J inches, wing 5^-. 



Obs. Easily to be separated from the Wood Sandpiper by the blackish 

 axillaries narrowly barred with white, and the shaft of the first primary which is 

 as dark as the rest of the feather. Moreover, the Green Sandpiper has only one 

 posterior notch in the body of the sternum, or breast-bone, while the Wood 

 Sandpiper, and most Waders, have two. 



Nesting. In this respect this bird is a most abnormal Limicole. Instead of 

 laying its eggs in a hollow in the ground, it nests it cannot be said to " build " 

 in trees. It selects, in some damp wood adjacent to ponds or marshes, an old 

 nest of the Crow, Magpie, Jay, Wood-Pigeon, Thrush, Fieldfare, Missel Thrush, 

 or ^Blackbird or an old squirrel's drey or even a chance aggregation of twigs 

 and dead leaves in a pine branch or a dead stump of a tree with a hollow in the 

 top at an elevation of three to thirty-six feet above the ground. Usually no- 

 extra lining is added, except in the case of bare wood in a hollowed stump, in 

 which case the birds forage for a little moss, or a few dead leaves. In Scandinavia 

 I have seldom failed to find a pair of Green Sandpipers at every little pond or 

 marsh I have come across, in a small opening in a pine wood, and I have no 

 doubt that in many cases the}' were nesting. But, being in pursuit of the birds, 

 themselves and not of eggs only, I never took a native with me to do the climbing,, 

 and very soon got tired of climbing to all the adjacent old nests myself; and, con- 

 sequently, missed the right trees as a matter of course. If an ornithologist on 

 the prowl wants to see and observe the birds, and not merely to amass eggs, he 



