CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. LAs 
assuming the summer plumage, their habits are entirely changed. 
They build their nests on the dryer places of the marshy ground, 
and are usualiy seen singly or in pairs. The nest is comfortably 
made of dry grasses and a few feathers, placed on a dry tuft of grass, 
perhaps surrounded by water. The young are able to leave the 
nest by the roth of July. The number reared in a nest is four or 
five. They follow their parents until they assume the winter plum- 
age, in the latter part of August or September or even later. (Turner.) 
237. Thick-billed Sandpiper. Pribilof Sandpiper. 
Arquatella ptilocnemis (COUES) RipGw. 1880. 
Mr. H. W. Elhott, the discoverer of this species, speaking of its 
range, says that besides the Pribilof islands, he found it just as 
abundantly on St. Matthew-island in 1874, 200 miles to the north, 
where it was breeding in large numbers as it does on the Pribilofs. 
A single pair was found nesting (by himself) on the south shore of 
St. Lawrence island in June, 1881. Krause, in winter, secured three 
specimens at Portage bay, which is on the mainland near the end of 
Chileat peninsula, but saw no large flocks until April, so that it is 
probable they winter south along the coast of Alaska and possibly 
British Columbia. (Nelson.) 
BREEDING NotTes.—I may say that this is the only wader that 
incubates on the Pribilof islands, with the marked exceptions of 
a stray couple now and then of Phalaropus hyperboreus. It makes 
its appearance early in May and repairs to the dry uplands and 
mossy hummocks, where it breeds. The nest is formed by the 
selection of a particular cryptogamic bunch. It lays four darkly- 
blotched pyriform eggs, and hatches them within twenty days. 
The young come from the shell in a thick, yellowish down, with 
dark-brown markings on the head and back, getting the plumage 
of their parents and taking to wing as early as the 1oth of August. 
(Elhott.) 
XCVII. ACTODROMAS Kaup. 1829. 
238, Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. 
Actodromas acuminata (Horsr.) RripGw. 1880. 
On September 16th, 1877, near St. Michael, I had the pleasure of 
securing a handsome young female of this bird, thus adding this 
