178 ■ GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



Breeding Notes. — ^This bird breeds plentifully on the Arctic 

 coast. Its eggs are oil-green marked with irregular spots of liver- 

 brown, of different sizes and shades, confluent at the obtuse end. 

 (Richardson.) This species is common at Point Barrow, Alaska, 

 and breeds abundantly, although the nest is exceejiingly hard to 

 find as the nesting birds are very wary and use every possible strat- 

 agem to mislead one when looking for the eggs. It arrives about 

 the end of May. Some of them, perhaps, arrive paired, but the 

 majority are pairing soon after their arrival, to- judge by their 

 actions. As the tundra gradually clears of snow they become more 

 scattered and spread further inland, deserting the shores of the 

 beach lagoons, although they hardly confine themselves as much 

 to the dry portions of the tundra as the Baird sandpiper is in the 

 habit of doing. The nest, which is like that of all the rest of the 

 waders, is always placed in the grass, sometimes in dry and some- 

 times in rather swampy places, but never like the phalarope's, on 

 the black tundra or on the isthmuses between the ponds. Both 

 parents share in the work of incubation, though we happened to 

 obtain more males than females with the eggs. (Murdoch.) 



In early seasons the first of these birds reach the Yukon mouth 

 and shores of Norton sound by the loth of May, and by the 25th 

 of that month they are in full force. They arrive in full breeding 

 plumage, and are generally in small flocks, which soon break up 

 and the birds scatter- in twos and threes over the moss and gfrass- 

 grown tundra to pair and attend to their summer duties. They 

 nest from the first of June to the first of July, and in 1877, 1 secur- 

 ed a set of four fresh eggs on the 3rd of the latter month. They 

 generally choose some dry knoll, or other slight elevation, over- 

 looking the neighbouring lakes and pools. Here, upon a bed of 

 last year's grasses, but without the trouble of arranging a formal 

 nest, the female deposits three or four large eggs of a pale green- 

 ish varying to pale brownish clay colour, with dull chocolate and 

 umber-brown spots and blotches. (Nelson.) 



