16 WILLET. 



There is a growing feeling among certain naturalists to exclude 

 all American birds from our European lists, and no doubt the avi- 

 faunse of tbe two continents are sufficiently distinct to justify tbe 

 principle upon which, this feeling is founded. But the rule 

 which obtains with regard to the British fauna, must to a certain 

 extent be applied to the European. If a well-known American 

 species is found occasionally or frequently to visit the old world, we 

 must, I think, undoubtedly place it in the same category as the 

 other border species which visit us from Africa or Asia. Temminck, 

 in both editions of his '^Manual," asserts that the Semipalmated 

 Sandpiper occurs occasionally in the north of Europe. Degland 

 notices a specimen killed at Abbeville, and refers to two others 

 which he had seen, also killed in France. Professor Blasius observes 

 (" Naumannia," 1865, p. 840, et seq.,) that, according to Count 

 Wallengren, this bird is not unusual in Scandinavia. Professor 

 Nilsson, however, declines to endorse the statement, and fears it may 

 be an error, resting, as it does, upon a single specimen in the 

 museum at Stockholm, " said to have been killed in Upland." I there- 

 fore introduce this bird only as an accidental visitor, and not as one 

 which belongs properly to the European fauna. 



In America, the Willet or Semipalmated Sandpiper has a range 

 from the coast of Florida to the distant shores and saline lakes in the 

 vicinity of the Saskatchewan, in the fifty-sixth parallel of latitude, 

 where Nuttall says it breeds, as well as in the middle states of the 

 Union. The account of this writer is so graphic and interesting, 

 that I shall give a long quotation from his ^^Ornithology," vol. ii, 

 p. 145. 



"The Willet passes the winter within the tropics, or along the 

 extensive shores of the Mexican Gulf. About the middle of March, 

 however, their lively vociferations, ^ pill -will- willet, pill-will- willet ' 

 begin commonly to be heard in all the marshes of the sea islands 

 of Georgia and South Caroling. In the middle states they arrive 

 about the 15th. of April, or sometimes later, according to the season; 

 and from that period to the close of July, their loud and shrill 

 cries, audible for half a mile, are heard incessantly throughout the 

 marshes where they now reside. Towards the middle of May, the 

 Willets begin to lay. Their nests, at some distance from the strand, 

 are made in the sedge of the salt meadows, comj)osed of wet rushes 

 and coarse grass, placed in a slight excavation in the tump; and 

 during the period of incubation, with some other marsh birds, the 

 sides of the nest are gradually raised to the height of five or six 

 inches. 



