Mr. A. Newton on the Breeding of the Green Sandpiper. 223 



nested in old Thrushes* nests, which information, he remarks, " I 

 naturally did not believe ;" but he states that some years after, in 

 1845, he obtained from the same man four fine eggs of a bird of this 

 species, which for many years had been wont to nestle in an old 

 beech tree. Still doubtful on the subject, the following spring he 

 himself found a nest of the bird on a pine which had a fork about 

 five-and-twenty or thirty feet high. " Joyfully," he says, " I chmbed 

 the tree, and found in that fork four e^s on a simple bed of old 

 moss." He goes on to say that in the spring of 1853 he again ob- 

 tained four eggs of the same species ; and in the spring of 1854 (the 

 year he was writing) he found a nest placed in the old nest of a 

 Song-Thrush, out of which the shed buds of the beech had not so 

 much as been removed. There were four eggs, which were hard sat 

 upon on the 25th of May. 



In the • Naumannia' for 1856 (vol. vi. p. 34), in an account of 

 an excursion in Western Pomerania ("Forpommem"), Dr. Altum 

 states that Totanus ochropm returns annually to its old nesting- 

 places, these being Missel-Thrushes' nests, whose remains were 

 still to be seen, often some hundred yards distant from the nearest 

 pool, and their height fifteen feet or more from the ground. The 

 ■ame journal fur Ks.'>7 contains a valuable series of observations on 

 the birds of the same district by Herr W. Hintz, iu which the 

 author says (vol. vii. part 1, p. 14) that on the 6th of May, 1855, 

 be found three ^gs of this bird on an "Else" [quaere, Pyrut do- 

 mett ica ?] in an old Dove's nest, as he thinks, though he states it 

 might have been that of a Jay. Formerly, he proceeds to remark, 

 he had only observed this Sandpiper to use old nests of Turdut mu- 

 ticus, excepting once, when he found some young ones, only a few 

 davs old, hard by a river-bank on a layor of ]iine-needle8 on an 

 **hUe"-st\ih. 



Soon after the publication of this last piece ot intelligence, appeared 

 that part of llerr Biidekcr's ' Eier dcr Europaischen Vogel,' wherein 

 (fol. XXX. no. 5) Helodroma* ochroptu was treated of, and a concise 

 summary of the foregoing accounts was given. This was remarked 

 upon by the writer of an article in ' The Ibis' for 1 S59 (vol. i. p. 405), 

 and thus the curious facts which I have above detailed were made 

 generally known, for the first time I believe, to English readers. In 

 1 860 a short recapitulation of them was also published by my friend 

 Dr. Baldamus, in the continuation of Naumann's celebrated ' Vogel 

 Deutschlands' (vol. liii. p. 241). Towards the close of the same 

 year also that excellent observer who veils his name under the sig- 

 nature of " An Old Bushman " contributed a series of articles to 

 • The Field ' newspaper, iu which he described his own experience of 

 the Green Sandpiper's way of nesting in Sweden. The natural- 

 history editor of that paper, not knowing what had been already 

 written, exhibited some signs of scepticism on the subject, whereupon 

 his correspondent reiterated his statement, saying (Field, No. 411, 

 Nov. 10, 1860, p. 393) that " there is no doubt about the matter," 

 and adding that he " never took the nest on the ground." 



I have now only to read to you a portion of a letter, dated Novem- 



