282 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



warms, and various insects, as well as of great quantities of minute shells. In 

 summer the Sanderling is much more insectivorous, and also feeds on the buds 

 of the Arctic saxifrages. The note of this Wader is a sharp, shrill whit ; whether 

 it utters a trill or any other cry at the breeding grounds observers who have had 

 ample opportunities of noticing omit to inform us. 



Nidification. — Only meagre details concerning the breeding habits of the 

 Sanderling are on record. MacFarlane appears to have been the first naturalist 

 to take the nest of this bird, he killing a female from her eggs on the tundras 

 near the Arctic Ocean in North-west America, on the 20th of June, 1863. This 

 nest was merely a hollow scantily lined with dry grass and leaves. Thirteen 

 years afterwards, almost to the very day (24th June), Captain Feilden found a 

 nest of the Sanderling, close to Cape Union in Grinnell Land, on the shores of 

 the Arctic Ocean at the very northern limit of known animal life. This nest was 

 made on a ridge of gravel several hundred feet above sea-level, and was merely a 

 slight hollow in the centre of a bent-down willow plant, lined with a few dead 

 leaves and withered catkins. By the 8th of August he observed the young able 

 to fly, yet still in company with their parents. The eggs of the Sanderling are 

 four in number, buffish-olive in ground-colour, densely mottled and spotted with 

 pale olive-brown, and with underlying markings of ink-grey. They measure on 

 an average 1'4 inch in length by 1"0 inch in breadth. Both parents assist in the 

 task of incubation, and one brood only is reared in the season. It is rather an 

 unusual circumstance in this group of birds for the adults to migrate south 

 before completing their autumn moult ; but this the Sanderling does, and I have 

 repeatedly shot adults in breeding dress in the first week in August. 



Diagnostic cliaracters — Calidris, with no hind toe, and the legs 

 and feet black. Length, 8 inches. 



