134 BRITISH BIRDS. 



of a dead larch tree, between sixty and seventy feet from the ground, we 

 became more reconciled to the name of Wood- Sandpiper. They were 

 excessively tame and were in full song. The note which the male utters 

 during the pairing-season is much more of a song than that of the Grass- 

 hopper Warbler, which it somewhat resembles ; it is a monotonous 

 til-il-il, begun somewhat low and slow, as the bird is descending in the air 

 with fluttering upraised wings, becoming louder and more rapid, and 

 reaching its climax as the bird alights on the ground or on a rail, or 

 sometimes on the bare branch of a willow, the points of its trembling 

 wings almost meeting over its head when its feet find support. This song 

 is a by no means unmusical trill, and has an almost metallic ring about it. 

 The alarm-note of the Wood- Sandpiper is somewhat like the tyu, tyii of the 

 Redshank, but much softer. With the exception of Temminck's Stint, the 

 Wood -Sandpiper was the commonest wader in the valley of the Yenesay ; 

 and in the valley of the Obb I found it equally common, feeding on the 

 banks of the river in company with Common and Green Sandpipers. 



The nest of the Wood-Sandpiper is very difficult to find, and is generally 

 discovered by accident in consequence of the female, who is a somewhat 

 close sitter, flying off, and thus revealing the place where her eggs are 

 concealed. This is generally in open country, not absolutely on swampy 

 ground, but seldom very far from it : a patch of dry ground, overgrown with 

 heath, sedges, and coarse grasses, is generally selected, frequently not far 

 from a few stunted willow bushes, on which the bird not unfrequently 

 alights. The nest itself is a mere hollow in the ground, lined with a few 

 dry stalks and blades of grass. Captain Elwes and I found the Wood- 

 Sandpiper not uncommon on the moors and swamps near Tarm, on the 

 west coast of Jutland, in 1880. We took a nest of this bird containing 

 four eggs on the 17th of May, on a moor within a mile of the village. 

 When I was at Valconsvaard in 1876 I obtained two nests of this bird 

 one on the 14th and the other on the 23rd of May. In the valley of the 

 Petchora we were not successful in finding the nest ; but on the 30th of 

 June we shot a pair of birds, which were very demonstrative, near a small 

 thicket of willows on the tundra, and succeeded in finding three pretty 

 little young in down not more than a day or two old. 



The eggs of the Wood- Sandpiper vary in ground-colour from creamy 

 white to dull buff and very pale olive, and are very handsomely spotted and 

 blotched with rich reddish brown. The spots vary in size from a pea down- 

 wards, and in the widest part of the egg are often confluent. Occasionally 

 the spots are evenly distributed over the egg, but at the smaller end they 

 are generally less and more scattered, and in rare instances very few 

 and far between. The underlying spots are pale brown, and seldom very 

 conspicuous. They vary in length from ] '55 to ] -4 inch, and in breadth 

 from I'l to TO inch. The only eggs at all likely to be confused with those 



