178 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
BREEDING NotTes.—tThis bird breeds plentifully on the Arctic 
coast. Its eggs are oil-green marked with irregular spots of liver- 
brown, of different sizes and shades, confluent at the obtuse end. 
(Richardson.) This species is common at Point Barrow, Alaska, 
and breeds abundantly, although the nest is exceedingly hard to 
find as the nesting birds are very wary and use every possible strat- 
agem to mislead one when looking for the eggs. It arrives about 
the end of May. Some of them, perhaps, arrive paired, but the 
majority are pairing soon after their arrival, to judge by their 
actions. As the tundra gradually clears of snow they become more 
scattered and spread further inland, deserting the shores of the 
beach lagoons, although they hardly confine themselves as much 
to the dry portions of the tundra as the Baird sandpiper is in the 
habit of doing. The nest, which is like that of all the rest of the 
waders, is always placed in the grass, sometimes in dry and some- 
times in rather swampy places, but never like the phalarope’s, on 
the black tundra or on the isthmuses between the ponds. Both 
parents share in the work of incubation, though we happened to 
obtain more males than females with the eggs. (Murdoch.) 
In early seasons the first of these birds reach the Yukon mouth 
and shores of Norton sound by the toth of May, and by the 25th 
of that month they are in full force. They arrive in full breeding 
plumage, and are generally in small flocks, which soon break up 
and the birds scatter in twos and threes over the moss and grass- 
grown tundra to pair and attend to their summer duties. They 
nest from the first of June to the first of July, and in 1877, I secur- 
ed a set of four fresh eggs on the 3rd of the latter month. They 
generally choose some dry knoll, or other slight elevation, over- 
looking the neighbouring lakes and pools. Here, upon a bed of 
last year’s grasses, but without the trouble of arranging a formal 
nest, the female deposits three or four large eggs of a pale green- 
ish varying to pale brownish clay colour, with dull chocolate and 
umber-brown spots and blotches. (Nelson.) 
