364 The Water-fowl Family 



bare and wet by the falling tide. All winter long 

 they stay braving the cold and hardest weather. 



While duck-shooting on the small rocky islands 

 in Long Island Sound I have often watched the 

 bird a few feet off, indifferent to all danger, 

 picking among the barnacles, occasionally utter- 

 ing its soft note as it took to wing. I shot one 

 under these circumstances in early May with a 

 few of the spring feathers noticeable in its plu- 

 mage. Usually with the first indication of end- 

 ing winter they are on their way north, following 

 the coast to the breeding-grounds in the Arctic 

 regions, — here visiting Iceland, Greenland, Spits- 

 bergen, and Nova Zembla. June is the time for 

 incubation, and the nest is placed on elevated 

 ground in some slight depression, lined with moss 

 or grass. Only in the breeding season does it 

 leave its loved rocky shores and seek the borders 

 of some fresh-water lake to rear its young, return- 

 ing as soon as possible to the ocean's roar. At 

 this time the males gave a cry like that of the 

 Bartramian sandpiper, but lower and shorter, 

 strutting and elevating the wings while uttering 

 this note. In its breeding plumage the purple 

 sandpiper is seldom seen. The birds remain 

 north until late fall, and even winter in Greenland 

 in some numbers, huddling together on protected 

 ledges and fissures of the rocks for protection, 

 when threatened with heavy weather. 



