90 1 HE WILSON BULLETIN No. 60. 



nest is merely ;i shallow depp-ssion in the sand and is usually placed 

 among ihr small stones that oi-.-iir on the top of the dune where the 

 l:*t great storm has washed them. They are inveterate nest builders. 

 May i::. IIMI.-I, we counted forty-five nest-like hollows made by one 

 pair of birds. Though the labor is nothing like as great, in point of the 

 number of nests, this bird has the nest-building mania of the Marsh 

 Wrens b eat en all hollow. This date we found no eggs, but previous- 

 ly Saunders took them .May .'50, 1884, and May 24, 1887, and a few days 

 later observed n young bird. May 30, 1907, Saunders found two sets, 

 one of four and the other one. The species leaves early in the fall 

 ami is usually gone by the first of September, as before 1907 we never 

 met the species on our fall trips. August 24, however, of that year we 

 found a number mingled with the other small waders on the beaches. 

 All seen then or later were juveniles, as the adults had already gone. 

 The last seen were Sept. 2. Strangely enough Saunders reports that 

 on the occasions of his early visits in 1882 to '87, all breeders seen 

 had the divided breast band of the type form, while of late years all 

 have been attributal to the variety circumcincta. We are aware that 

 t,his subspecies has been discarded by the committee on nomencla- 

 ture, but it is interesting to note that there has been this change in 

 the type of coloration of the species in this locality in late years. The 

 fall birds taken in 1907, however, all show the divided band; though 

 this is likely the result of juvenility/ 



64. *Arenaria morinella, Ruddy Turnstone. 



A regular migrant and likely a more or less common one both spring 

 and fall. Saunders took one June 5, 1884 ; and May 30, 1907, we noted 

 and took several. In the fall we have met them at various times be- 

 tween August 24, 1907, and Sept. 1G, 1906. They were far more com- 

 mon in 1907 than any other fall that we have been on the Point, and 

 for the first few days a couple or so were always to be seen with the 

 larger flocks of other waders. Previous years we had only seen sin- 

 gle individuals. They are a little more suspicious and difficult to 

 approach than the other inhabitants of the beach, and it took careful 

 stalking to secure what we did. In life their superior size when 

 mixed in with other waders is not so striking as one would suppose 

 from the written measurements or a comparison of their skins. 



Go. Colinus Virginian us, Bob-white. 



Saunders states, "Not very common in 1884, although found nearly 

 to the end of the Point, at least as far as the cultivated lands 

 reached." Personally we have never met it on the Point proper, 

 though that is likely the result of our not working the more culti- 

 vated sections. Keays noted but one Sept. 19, 1901, and we flushed 

 a couple on the mainland near the base May 13, 1905. Sept. 20, 1906, 

 Saunders saw ten near the dyke, and August 20, 1907, and Gardner 

 reported a covey of about thirty. The local sportsmen tell us that it 



