121 BRITISH BIRDS. 



I made the acquaintance of the Spotted Sandpiper last autumn. West 

 of Lake Ontario the country is drained by numerous rivers, or creeks as 

 they are locally called, on the banks of which, trees of various kinds 

 flourish. In autumn, when the ground is dry, these little creeks dwindle 

 down to very small streams, but spread out here and there into little 

 swamps and marshes, and are the great resort of birds of various kinds. 

 Of the true water-birds the Great-belted Kingfisher is the most conspicuous, 

 the Killdeer Plover the noisiest, and the Spotted Sandpiper the most 

 numerous. The latter bird is very unobtrusive. If his back is turned 

 towards you he is almost invisible on the stony shores. If his white 

 breast can be seen, he sees you almost as soon as you see him ; and though 

 the white bar across his expanded wings is conspicuous enough during 

 flight, the rapidity of his motions saves him from the inexperienced shooter. 

 The habits of the Spotted Sandpiper are precisely the same as those of its 

 European representative. It gets up with the same cry, repeated oftener, 

 louder, and quicker the more alarmed it happens to be. It runs along the 

 sandy or muddy banks with great rapidity, dodges between the stones, on 

 one of which it perches for a few moments, and begins to nod its head and 

 jerk its tail, as if trying to gulp down a refractory worm. Both on the 

 shores of Lake Erie and on the banks of the creek near the residence of 

 my friend Mr. W. E. Brooks, in Ontario, this bird was common, but neither 

 Allan nor I saw an adult bird during my stay there in the last half of 

 August. They were for the most part solitary, and in neither locality did 

 we see more than two or three together. 



It is not known that the Spotted Sandpiper differs from its European 

 ally in its choice of a nesting-site ; but Audubon remarked that in the 

 colder climate of Labrador it concealed its nest under ledges of rocks, 

 collected a considerable amount of moss for the outer walls, and added a 

 compact lining of slender grasses and feathers of the Eider Duck. The 

 eggs are four in number, pale buff in ground-colour, with very dark reddish- 

 brown spots and blotches, which vary in size from that of a pea down to a 

 speck. The underlying spots are pale grey in colour, occasionally very 

 large and conspicuous, but generally small and obscure. The eggs vary in 

 length from T35 to 1'2 inch, and in breadth from TO to 0'9 inch. Com- 

 pared with eggs of the Common Sandpiper they are smaller, more boldly 

 spotted, and the spots are much darker. Except in being much smaller, 

 they closely resemble eggs of the Killdeer Plover, but on an average they 

 are less richly marked, and the spots are not so often confluent. 



The Spotted Sandpiper differs from its Old-World representative in 

 several important points. Adults in summer have a large, nearly round, 

 black spot at the tip of every feather of the underparts, except on the 

 centre of the belly, and the dark bars on the upper parts are somewhat more 

 regularly distributed over the entire surface. At all seasons of the year 



