608 WOOD-SANDPIPER. 
The Wood-Sandpiper is only a wanderer to the Feeroes, but on the 
mainland of Northern Europe it is common during the summer, 
breeding as far south asthe valley of the Danube, and probably in some 
parts of North Italy; while on May 28th 1870 I shot a bird which 
had evidently been incubating, on the edge of a wooded marsh near 
Aranjuez in Central Spain. Over the rest of the Continent it is well 
known on passage ; its migrations reaching to South Africa, India, 
Malayasia and Australia. In Asia its breeding-range stretches from 
the great mountain-ranges northward to the Taimyr, and eastward 
to Kamchatka. 
In Europe the nest is usually concealed in some depression on 
tolerably dry ground, though not far from water, and usually 
amongst bog-myrtle, stunted heath, sedge, or other coarse vegeta- 
tion ; but on the Yenesei Mr. Popham found that, in four cases out 
of five, the eggs were laid in old nests of the Fieldfare. As this 
habit had previously been supposed to be peculiar to the Green 
Sandpiper, the sitting-birds (all males) were shot. The eggs, 4 in 
number, are often pale green in ground-colour, though sometimes 
buffish-white, and are speckled and blotched with reddish-brown, 
especially at the broader end : measurements 1°5 by 1 in. Incubation 
begins about the middle of May in Holland, though later in the 
north ; the male indulging in ‘ play’ similar to that of the Common 
Sandpiper during courtship, and uttering a tremulous note, /ero, 
Zeero; but the cry of alarm is a sharp gif, gif. This bird perches 
on bushes, trees or stakes even more often than its predecessor. It 
feeds on worms, small molluscs, insects and their larve, and a disagree- 
able musky odour usually pervades its flesh. 
This species is rather smaller than the Green Sandpiper, but with 
a proportionately longer tarsus ; and it has the upper parts streaked 
with olive-brown, the margin of each feather of the mantle showing 
buffish-white spots (elongated and well defined in the young, smaller 
and triarigular in the adult); the quills are dusky, but the outer one 
has a zAite shaft (not dusky as in the Green Sandpiper) ; upper tail- 
coverts white with narrow dark shaft-flecks ; outer tail-feathers white, 
with bars on both webs in the young and on the outer web only in 
the adult, the remaining feathers being distinctly barred ; neck, 
throat and breast dull white, thickly streaked with ash-brown, the 
flanks being barred with the same colour; axi//aries white, merely 
flecked with drown ; abdomen white ; legs and feet yellowish-olive. 
Length 8°5 in. (bill 1°r), wing 5 in. 
Illustrations of the characteristic axillaries and tail-feathers of this 
and of the Green Sandpiper are given on p. 612. 
