2i6 THE GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL 



Habits. — The Green Sandpiper arrives at its breeding 

 grounds in Pomerania at the beginning of April, but in the Arctic 

 regions it is nearly two months later. The return journey com- 

 mences in August, and is undertaken rather slowly, and continues 

 through September into October. The haunts of this species are 

 swamps and marshes in forests, the banks of wooded streams, and 

 lowland dykes. It is not much of a coast bird, even in winter. 

 It is a solitary species, seldom seen even in small parties except 

 during early autumn before the broods have got separated, nor 

 does it appear to associate with other Waders. Its flight is rapid 

 and well-sustained ; and wherever there is any cover it is by no 

 means a shy bird. Its food is principally composed of insects, 

 but small worms and snails are also eaten. The note of the 

 Green Sandpiper is a rather low and musical tyc tye-tye, modu- 

 lated under alarm or excitement into tyi'ik-tyi'ik-tyuk. Whether 

 the bird has any trill during the pairing season has not been 

 recorded. 



Nidification. — ^The breeding habits of the Green Sandpiper 

 are remarkably interesting, inasmuch that the bird, instead of 

 making a nest on the ground, lays its eggs in trees, usually in 

 the deserted homes of other species. In some localities the 

 eggs are laid as early as the middle of April, but they are of 

 course much later in higher latitudes. During the breeding 

 season the Green Sandpiper is as often to be seen in the trees 

 and bushes as on the ground. A deserted nest of a Blackbird or 

 Thrush, a Jay, or a Ring Dove, or even a Crow, is often selected 

 by the female in which to deposit her eggs. As a rule old nests 

 are selected from three to twelve feet from the ground, but the 

 eggs have been taken from an old drey of a squirrel as many as 

 thirty feet from it, whilst others have been found in a hole in a 

 fallen tree, and on the stump of a tree which had either been 

 felled or blown down. The eggs are sometimes laid in a broad 

 fork on a lodgment of drifted leaves and lichen. Almost in- 

 variably the nests or sites selected are close to waters of some 

 kind, and often in marshes. The eggs are four in number (seven 

 are on record, doubtless the produce of two pairs of birds), and 

 vary from creamy white sometimes tinged with olive, to pale buff 

 in ground colour, spotted with dark reddish brown, and under- 



