252 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



wheeling and advancing with a common impulse, just like the autumn flights 

 of Starlings. The food of the Dunlin consists of crustaceans, sand-worms, 

 mollusks, etc., on the shore ; but insects and their larvae, small worms, ground 

 fruits, and various vegetable fragments are eaten in summer. Its note is a rather 

 harsh purr — hence one of its trivial names — but at the breeding grounds it utters 

 a long-drawn peezh, something like the well-known cry of the Greenfinch. The 

 male trills repeatedly during the pairing season, like most other Sandpipers. 



Nidification. — The Dunlin begins to arrive at its breeding grounds towards 

 the end of April, and in southern haunts its eggs are laid during May, but in the 

 Arctic regions they are about a month later. The nest is always well concealed, 

 often by the side of a little moorland pool amongst the rush tussocks, or beneath 

 a bush of bilberry or heather, and even more frequently in a tuft of cotton grass 

 or other coarse herbage. It is simply a hollow with a scanty lining of dry leaves 

 and grass, and perhaps a few twigs round the margin. The eggs are four in 

 number, and vary in ground-colour from pale olive to pale brown and buff, blotched 

 and spotted with rich reddish and blackish-brown, and with a few obscure under- 

 lying markings of grey. They are pyriform in shape, and measure on an average 

 1'3 inch in length by '95 inch in breadth. The parent bird sits lightly, leaving 

 the nest at the least alarm. Incubation, performed by the female, lasts from 

 twenty-one to twenty-two days. One brood only is reared in the year, and 

 as soon as the young can fly a movement is made to the adjoining coasts. 



Diagnostic characters.— Tringa, with a great deal of white on the 

 innermost secondaries, but little or none on the upper tail coverts, and with black 

 legs and feet. Length, 8 inches. 



