54 



PECTORAL SANDPIPER. 



Tringa pectoralis, JENYNS. EYTON. GoTTLD. 



Tringa ? Pectoralis. Pectus The breast? 



THIS is an American species, and not uncommon in different 

 parts of the United States Maine, Massachusetts, and the 

 neighbourhood of Boston; and southwards in Tobago, and 

 others of the West Indian Islands, and so on to Brazil. 



In Yorkshire one, of which Thomas George Bonney, Esq., 

 of St. John's College, Cambridge, has written me word, was 

 shot near Filey, in the East Hiding, a small and quiet sea- 

 side place, which, on account of these qualities, I would 

 recommend to ornithological students, in preference to Burling- 

 ton, or Scarborough, though the 'Queen of English watering 

 places;' one also at the Tees' mouth, near Redcar, on the 30th. 

 of August, 1853, and another in a grass field at Chatham, 

 near there, on the 17th. of October in the same year; both 

 are put on record in 'The Naturalist,' volume iii, page 275-6, 

 by T. S. Rudd, Esq. In Norfolk, one, a female, was shot 

 on Breydon Broad, near Yarmouth, on the 30th. of September, 

 1853. In Cornwall it has been met with about Gwyllyn 

 Yase, near Falmouth; also one on the shore of Annet, one 

 of the Isles of Scilly, on the 27th. of May, 1840, by D. W. 

 Mitchell, Esq., of Penzance. 



They go north to build in the spring, and return in the 

 autumn. 



They are fond of moist and marshy places and the banks 

 of rivers, 'low down in a grassy vale,' and near the sea. 

 They mingle with other species, and collect in flocks. 



The flight of this Sandpiper is 'firm, rapid, and well 

 sustained. It skims rather low over the surface of the water 

 or the land, and at times shoots high up into the air, 



