CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 1 71 



assuming the summer plumage, their habits are entirely changed. 

 They build their nests on the dryer places of the marshy ground, 

 and are usually seen singly or in pairs. The nest is comfortably 

 made of dry grasses and a few feathers, placed on a dry tuft of grass, 

 perhaps surrounded by water. The young are able to leave the 

 nest by the loth of July. The number reared in a nest is four or 

 five. They follow their parents until they assume the winter plum- 

 age, in the latter part of August or September or even later. {Tu rn er. ) 



237. Thick-billed Sandpiper. Pribilof Sandpiper. 



Arquatella ptilocnemis (CouES) Ridgw. 1880. 



Mr. H. W. Elliott, the discoverer of this species, speaking of its 

 range, says that besides the Pribilof islands, he found it just as 

 abundantly on St. Matthew island in 1874, 200 miles to the north, 

 where it was breeding in large numbers as it does on the Pribilofs. 

 A single pair was found nesting (by himself) on the south shore of 

 St. Lawrence island in June, 1881. Krause, in winter, secured three 

 specimens at Portage bay, which is on the mainland near the end of 

 Chilcat peninsula, but saw no large flocks until April, so that it is 

 probable they winter south along the coast of Alaska and possibly 

 British Columbia. (Nelson.) 



Breeding Notes. — I may say that this is the only wader that 

 incuba,tes on the Pribilof islands, with the marked exceptions of 

 a stray couple now and then of Phalaropus hyperboreus. It makes 

 its appearance early in May and repairs to the dry uplands and 

 mossy hummocks, where it breeds. The nest is formed by the 

 selection of a particular cryptogamic bunch. It lays four darkly- 

 blotched pyriform eggs, and hatches them within twenty days. 

 The young come from the shell in a thick, yellowish down, with 

 dark-brown markings on the head and back, getting the plumage 

 of their parents and taking to wing as early as the loth of August. 

 {^lliott.) 



XCVIII. ACTODROMAS Kaup. 1829. 



238. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. 



Actodromas acuminata (HoRSF.) Ridgw. 1880. 

 On September i6th, 1877, near St. Michael, I had the pleasure of 

 securing a handsome young female of this bird, thus adding this 



