128 NOTES ON THE 
‘‘they were very tame and could be shot at again and again, 
returning to the same place, and walking unconcernedly about 
on the mud among their dead and dying comrades, perfectly 
oblivious in their search for food, of the author of so much 
destruction.”” And I could add similar reports from other 
localities if they were needed. The fiocks increase in size until- 
they are driven away by the cold, but they never assume the 
proportions which they do on the seacoast. The above was 
written in 1880, since which the bird, eggs and nest have been 
added to my personal collections, and obtained by several col- 
lectors. The nest is located on dry knolls, or sand dunes near 
the shore of a pond, and consists of a hollow in the friable 
soil, into which is placed a moderate quantity of dried grass. 
There are four pretty, creamy eggs, dotted and blotched with 
dark-brown more pronounced near the larger end. 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
The smallest of all known species of this group found in 
North America; bill about as long as the head, slightly curved 
towards the end, which is very slightly expanded; grooves in 
both mandibles to near the tip; wing long; tertiaries nearly as 
long as the primaries; tail short, middle feathers longest, 
outer feathers frequently longer than the intermediate; legs 
long; lower third of the tibia naked; toes long, slender, mar- 
gined, and flattened beneath; hind toe small; upper parts with 
nearly every feather having a large central spot of brownish- 
black, and widely margined with ashy and bright brownish-red; 
rump and middle of the upper tail coverts, black; outer coverts 
white, spotted with black; stripe over the eye, throat, and 
breast, pale ashy-white, with numerous small longitudinal spots 
of ashy-brown; abdomen and under tail coverts, white; quills, 
dark brown, with the shafts of the primaries white; tertiaries 
edged with reddish; middle feathers of the tail, brownish-black; 
outer feathers light ashy-white; uuder surface of wing, light 
brownish-ashy, with a large spot of white near the shoulder; 
axillary feathers, white; bill and legs, greenish-brown, the 
latter frequently yellowish-green. 
Length, 5.50 to 6; wing, 3.50 to 3.75; tail, 1.75; bill to gape, 
0.75; tarsus, 0.75. 
Habitat, North and South America. 
EREUNETES PUSILLUS (L.). (246.) 
SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER. 
A regular migrant, reaching the section where I reside about 
the 25th of April,intimately associated with the Least Sandpip- 
ers, they remain about the smaller lakes and ponds fora short 
time, and disappear so much like that species after three or 
