392 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



syllables tye-tye-tye, which, when the bird is alarmed, becomes 

 a loud excited tyuk-tyuk-fyuk" 



Nest The present species has the curious habit of nesting 

 on trees, at a height from three to thirty feet above the ground. 

 Mr. Seebohm states that, although it does not build a nest of 

 its own, its eggs are placed in the fork of a tree-trunk, on the 

 leaves, or lichen and moss which may have accumulated there. 

 The eggs have been found in the old nests of the Song- 

 Thrush, Mistle-Thrush, and Fieldfare, while those of the Ring- 

 Dove, Jay, Red-backed Shrike, and even old Crows' nests 

 or deserted Squirrel's dreys have been utilised by the Green 

 Tattler. He writes : "On the 30th of May, 1882, as I was 

 walking in a forest about twenty miles south of Stolp in Pome- 

 rania, with my friend Dr. Holland, we passed a small swamp, 

 where a Green Sandpiper attracted our attention by its loud 

 cries. A few stunted larches and alder-bushes still grew in the 

 swamp, and the bird flew from branch to branch and bush to 

 bush in the most excited manner, having, no doubt, young for 

 whose safety it was so anxious. Hintz says that he has known 

 the nest to be in a hole in a fallen tree-trunk, on the stump of a 

 felled or broken-down tree, but most commonly in old nests from 

 three to twelve feet from the ground, though, on one occasion, 

 he took the eggs from an old Squirrel's nest in a birch tree at 

 a height of thirty feet." It would be interesting to know the 

 way in which the old birds carried their young to the ground 

 from such an elevation. 



Eggs. Four in number. The ground-colour varies from 

 greenish-white to pale clay and stone-colour ; the overlying spots 

 are chocolate or reddish-brown, and are distributed over the 

 entire surface, but more numerously at the larger end; the 

 underlying spots are of a purplish-grey, and are equally dis- 

 tributed. Axis, i'5-i'65 ; diam., i*o5-i'2. 



II. THE SOLITARY TATTLER. HELODROMAS SOLITARIUS. 



Tringa soUtaria, Wilson, Amer. On. vii. p. 53, pi. 58, fig. 3 



(1813). 



Totanus solitarius, B. O. U. List Brit. B. p. 175 (1883); See- 

 bohm, Hist. Brit. B. Hi. p. 130 (1885); Saunders, Man. 

 Brit. B. p. 597 (1889) ; Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit. B. part xxvi, 



