136 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



Family-SCOL OP A CID^. 



Purple Sandpiper. 



Tringa striata, LiNN. 



AN essentially Arctic bird, breeding chiefly in tbe High north. According to 

 the more modem views, it is considered to be a bird of the Atlantic 

 shores, the Pacific representatives being separated under the names of T. couesi, 

 the ordinary type, and T. ptilocnemis, which is supposed to be confined to the 

 Prybilov Islands. Our bird breeds in Greenland, Spitzbergen, Iceland, the 

 Faeroes, Northern Norway, Novaya Zemlya and the Taimyr Peninsula, and 

 remains to winter in a good many of these — also in Arctic N.E. America. In 

 our country positive evidence of its breeding is still wanting. Quite young birds, 

 barely able to fly, have been found on the Fame Islands, a very favourite haunt 

 of theirs, and where I have seen them in May. And there is some reason to 

 believe that they breed on some of the islands off the coast of Scotland, especially 

 the Shetlands. 



The Purple Sandpiper is a bird of limited range, and does not migrate far 

 from its summer quarters, though a wanderer has been shot in the Azores. In 

 Spain it occurs in winter, and has reached Morocco. On the rest of Western 

 Europe it is not uncommon on rock}- shores in winter — also on the shores of 

 E. North America, down to about lat. 30°, and has straggled to the Bermudas. 

 I must take this opportunity of demurring to Mr. Howard Saunders' statement 

 ("Man. B.B." p. 579) that in Iceland, amongst other places, it is the most 

 abundant bird of its genus. In Northern Iceland six pairs of Dunlins will be 

 met with, to every one of the Purple Sandpiper. 



Description of adult in summer : bill nearly black, yellow-brown at base ; 

 iris hazel ; upper parts sooty black with light margins to the feathers, chestnut 

 on the crown, grey on the back of the neck, and a mixture of chestnut, buflF, 

 and white on the shoulders ; wing feathers sooty with white margins, most con- 

 spicuous on the secondaries, some of which are almost entirely white ; central 

 tail-feathers dusky, the rest grey ; throat dirty white, faintly and minutely 

 speckled with dusky; neck, sides of head, chest and flanks, dusky-brown, streaked 

 with black on the throat, and barred with the same on the breast and flanks ; 



