BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 141 
feathers strongly tinged with ashy; others spotted with dark 
ashy-brown; bill dark bluish-brown, lighter at the base; legs 
light blue; iris brown. 
Length, 15; wing, 8.25; tail, 3.25; bill, 2.50; tarsus, 2.50. 
Habitat, Temperate North America. 
BARTRAMIA LONGICAUDA (BEcHSTEIN). (261.) 
BARTRAMIAN SANDPIPER. 
Sub-common and resident. Arrives the first week in April in 
small parties when they are found on the open pastures on dry 
knolls, after the manner of the plovers. Its habits in these 
respects confound it with the other species mentioned, hence 
the popular name of Upland Plover. Sometimes for a short 
time following their arrival they seem quite common, but by 
the 10th of May they are manifestlv diminishing in numbers, 
and by the 25th only those which are to breed here are left, the 
others having mostly passed on further north, and those re- 
maining having paired, enter upon the structure of their nests 
and depositing their eggs, which are three to four in number, 
and vary exceedingly in the shades of color from creamy drab 
to pure buff, between which are all gradations of those two 
colors. They are spotted with different degrees of brown and 
almost obsolete lilac. Few of the Wading Birds have so wide 
a range of choice of location for their nest. One many years 
since was in a closely grazed pasture near a rice marsh in the 
northwestern part of the city in which I am writing, and was 
a mere excuse for a structure of the kind, consisting of a pinch 
of grass blades loosely strung around a slight depression in 
the ground and partially under a tuft of rank grass where the 
offal of the preceding year had made the cattle refuse to crop 
it. Another discovered a few years later, with an incomplete 
complement of eggs, was on the sandy, high plains west of 
Fort Snelling, and had no covert, and still less grass distribu- 
ted around the depression in the ground. 
Competent observers assure me that they more commonly 
build close to the hills of corn in the cornfields, where the in- 
cidental protection leaves them less apparent motive to seek 
concealment, yet the nest is much more bulky with grass and 
weeds. Their food, as indicated by the contents of their crops 
at this time in the year, consists chiefly of crickets, grasshop- 
pers, small beetles and seeds of different kinds. These kinds 
of food are abundant at that time of the year. 
