The Zoologist — September, 1870. 2269 



A List of the Birds of Cornwall. By Edward Hearle Rood, Esq. 

 (Continued from Zool. S. S. 2244). 



Wood Sandpiper. — Not uncomnion in the autumn, and sometimes 

 in the spring months : seven specimens obtained in one day, in the 

 month of August, 1840, from the Land's End marshes, all of v^hich 

 proved to be birds of the year : smaller than the last-named species, 

 with the legs longer. 



[At p. 352 of his ' Spring and Summer in Lapland,' Mr. Wheel- 

 wright says of this bird, " Far different are the quiet unobtrusive habits 

 of this little bird during the breeding-season, to the boisterous noisy 

 behaviour of its congener, the green sandpiper. Early in the summer 

 the wood sandpiper has a new pretty little song, which it trills out 

 when seated on a tussock of grass or when risin gin the air in the 

 vicinity of the nest. I have much oftener seen this bird seated on a tree 

 or a rail than the green sandpiper, although that bird will occasionally 

 perch."] 



[Mr. Harting, at page 178 of his ' Birds of Middlesex,' seems to me 

 to be the fii-st author clearly to distinguish between the wood sand- 

 piper and the green sandpiper, for which it may readily be mistaken. 

 " It is rather smaller, has proportionately a shorter beak and longer 

 tarsus, the legs are lighter in colour, and it has not the white markings 

 under the wings which are so conspicuous in the green sandpiper : a 

 marked difference also exists in the tail-feathers; in the green sand- 

 piper the tail is for the greater part white ; the outside feathers on 

 each side with one small dark spot on the outer web near the end ; the 

 next feather with two dark spots ; the third and fourth with two rather 

 broad dark bands; the fifth and sixth with three or four dark bands; 

 but all the marks are on the distal half of the tail-feathers, leaving the 

 basal half pure white. In the wood sandpiper the tail-feathers are 

 barred with narrow transverse white bars on a ground colour of 

 greenish black. The axillary plume in the green sandpiper is grayish 

 black, with narrow angular white bars ; in the wood sandpiper it is 

 white, faintly marked with transverse dusky bars. There is another 

 point in which these birds differ and which appears to have been 

 hitherto overlooked : in the wood sandpiper the shaft of the first quill- 

 feather is white, the remaining shafts dusky, whereas in the green 

 sandpiper the shafts of all the quill-feathers are dusky."] 



Common Sandpiper. — Summer visitant : seen generally in pairs 

 on the margins of fresh-water ponds. Trengwainton, Madron ; 

 Trevethow, Lelant ; &c. 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. V. * 2 T 



