270 THE GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL 



by no means a shy bird, especially when by itself, and always 

 seems to prefer to run along just out of harm's way rather than 

 to take wing. It swims well and frequently, and occasionally 

 alights on the sea after it has been flushed. The food of the 

 Purple Sandpiper consists of crustaceans, moUusks, sand-worms, 

 insects, and the seeds of various marine plants. Most of this 

 food is obtained as the tide is dashing over the rocks in its ebb 

 or flow, and during the period of high water the bird not un- 

 frequently retires inland a little way, or to a rocky islet or point 

 to await the turn. The flight of this species is rapid and straight- 

 forward, but except during migration it is seldom very high, and 

 even then I am inclined to think that the bird, as a rule, journeys 

 close to the water. The note of this Sandpiper is a shrill and 

 quickly uttered tee-wit. 



Nidification. — In its more southerly breeding stations, as 

 for instance at the Faroes, where the influence of the Gulf Stream 

 causes a comparatively early spring, the Purple Sandpiper com- 

 mences to breed in the second week of May ; further north and 

 east it is at least a month later. Its breeding grounds are rarely 

 far from the sea, either in the immediate neighbourhood of the 

 beach amongst broken ground covered with scanty herbage, or in 

 marshy districts at the summit of adjoining hills. In the Faroes 

 both Wolley and Captain Feilden found it nesting on the fells, 

 the latter naturalist taking its eggs before the snow had melted 

 from the sheltered hollows and the tops of the hills. The Purple 

 Sandpiper, if it does not actually pair for life, seems much 

 attached to its nesting place, and appears yearly to frequent the 

 same spot. Wolley had the eggs for two successive years from a 

 nest made on the same piece of ground on which a colony of 

 Skuas were breeding. The nest of the Purple Sandpiper, like 

 that of most Waders, is merely a hollow in the ground, lined with 

 a few bits of dry vegetable refuse, such as moss and grass. The 

 eggs are four in number, and vary in ground colour from pale 

 olive to bufiish brown, very handsomely spotted and blotched, 

 mottled and streaked with dark blackish brown and reddish brown, 

 and with numerous and well-defined underlying markings of pale 

 brown and violet-gray. They are pyriform, and measure on an 

 average I'S inch in length by I'os inch in breadth. Both parents 



