GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 269 



Great Lakes and on the shores of New Brunswick, occasionally 

 wandering to the Bermudas and the Azores ; whilst one example 

 has been obtained in South Africa. 



Allied Forms. — Tringa marUima couesi, said to be an 

 inhabitant of the Aleutian Islands, and T. mariiima ptilocnemis , 

 an inhabitant of the Prybilof Islands, in Behring Sea, during 

 summer, and wandering in winter to the Kurile Islands and the 

 coast of Alaska. So utterly slight are the characters on which 

 these subspecies of the Purple Sandpiper are based, that I feel 

 small hesitation in ignoring them, and consider it much the 

 wisest to treat the three forms as one until more reliable and 

 substantial characters are discovered. The Purple Sandpiper is 

 probably most closely allied to the Dunlin, a British species 

 dealt with elsewhere. 



Time during which the Purple Sandpiper may be 

 taken. — August ist to March ist. 



Habits. — A few Purple Sandpipers make their appearance on 

 our coasts early in September, but the great majority of birds 

 arrive towards the end of that month and during October. Many 

 are taken in the flight nets of the Wash, or used to be a dozen 

 years ago, in the first week of November. They remain with us 

 for the most part, comparatively few prolonging their flight to the 

 south, until the following May, when the return migration north is 

 undertaken. Although this species is decidedly partial to a rocky 

 coast, a shore where huge boulders shelve down into the water 

 and are left bare at low tide, it is by no means uncommonly 

 observed on mud-flats and salt marshes. A favourite haunt of 

 this kind is in the Wash, and there I have repeatedly shot this 

 bird from flocks of Dunlins and Knots, and observed it very 

 frequently running over the bare mud round the margins of the 

 big tide-pools at low water. At other times it frequents the rock- 

 bound coast, and seeks its food upon the wet weed-draped 

 boulders as the waves break over them and spread them with the 

 food it loves. I have seen it running over the rocks almost 

 before the big waves have spent their force and broken into 

 seething drifts upon them ; and so venturesome is the little bird 

 that it runs along the very edge of the waves, where each one 

 that breaks upon the shore seems certain to sweep it away. It is 



