596 SCOLOPACHLE. 



observed when running, to spread and flirt the tail up like 

 our Common Sandpiper. Their food consists of worms and 

 insects, and their note is a shrill whistle, whence it is by 

 some called the Whistling Sandpiper. Colonel Sykes says 

 the note resembles the word cheet, cheet, cheet. 



The Rev. Richard Lubbock has sent me several notices 

 of the habits of this bird in Norfolk, from which the fol- 

 lowing are extracts. " Sir Thomas Beevor told me that 

 one of these Sandpipers built in a hollow on the side of 

 a clay-pit upon his estate, in the autumn of 1839, and 

 hatched four young, which, to his vexation, were taken by 

 a shepherd^s boy. They are common during summer and 

 autumn upon a small stream which runs through his pro- 

 perty near Attleburgh. I have noted this bird as ob- 

 served at the end of October 1824, on the twenty- third 

 of December, 1832, and the ninth of December, 1836. 

 I killed a specimen in most severe weather on the fourth 

 of January, 1837, deep snow on the ground, and all 

 the Snipes driven out of the country by stress of 

 weather. This Sandpiper has probably the loudest note, 

 for its size, of any of our fen birds." In a letter, re- 

 ceived on the fifteenth of September last, 1840, this 

 gentleman says, "after observing these birds about the 

 neighbouring streams for several seasons continuously, I 

 am nearly certain that they remain here all the year, with 

 the exception of that period in spring and early summer, 

 during which they withdraw to hatch and rear their young. 

 I have shot them in extreme frosty weather, and have 

 always seen one here and there during the Snipe shooting, 

 in March, but the eleventh of April is the latest time in 

 spring at which I have observed them. This year I re- 

 quested my nephew, who is often about the rivulet look- 

 ing for fish, to let me know as soon as he perceived their 



