The Purple Sandpiper. ^37 



belly white; legs and feet dusky with a yellow tinge. Length 8i inches: 

 (females sometimes 9), closed wing 4f to aS much as Sj i^ females (^ E Fin- 

 mark, Collett; S Kostin Schar, Novaya Zemlya, 18, 7, '95; 9, shot off four 

 eggs, Vathla Heithi, Iceland, 27, 6, '85). 



Adults in winter lose the chestnut and white margins to the feathers of the 

 tipper parts, which are then uniformly sooty with slightly paler margins of dull 

 grey, and have a beautiful purple gloss which is little seen in the summer 

 dress ; sides of head, neck, and breast, dark grey ; throat and belly white. 



Young birds in autumn are much like adults in winter, but have some white 

 margins to the scapular feathers, and more conspicuous white edges to the wing 

 coverts. 



Nestlings : forehead rusty ; crown black, mottled with fawn and white, as is 

 also the back ; back of neck and under parts nearly white. 



Obs. : the Purple Sandpiper may always be recognized by its invariably dark, 

 nearly black, rump, the purple sheen on the back, and white secondaries, which 

 are very conspicuous in flight. 



In the extreme north the nest is often quite close to the sea, little above 

 high- water mark. But in Iceland, and at the southern borders of its breeding 

 range generally, the Purple Sandpiper usually nests on the fells. My first nest, 

 from which I shot the female mentioned above, was near the top of a high 

 ridge in North Iceland, nearly sixteen hundred feet above sea level, on a small 

 bare patch of recently uncovered ground amongst snow fields ; it was a slight 

 hollow in a withered tuft of Dryas odopetala, and rather a substantial nest for a 

 Wader, consisting of a good handful of leaves of Dryas and Salix lanata, a little 

 short grass, two white Ptarmigan's feathers and a few of the parents'. Collett 

 states that in Finmark the male alone takes care of the young birds, and Abel 

 Chapman has usually found the male at the nest (" Wild Norway," p. 295, foot- 

 note). I have no doubt that this is the general rule, but in the nests I have 

 seen (not a great number) I happen to have met with the female only. The 

 four eggs are generally pale grey-green in ground colour, spotted with light 

 neutral tint, and blotched with rich umber brown; occasionally the ground colour 

 is grey buff, or light brown, when they very closely resemble the eggs of the 

 Dunlin; but they are generally a shade larger than these, measuring nearly \\ 

 inch by i, or even i^. 



A very silent bird is the Purple Sandpiper, as a rule, uttering occasionally, 

 as it takes wing, or on the wing, a low unmusical " whit-whit." Saxby (" Birds 

 of Shetland") speaks of another note "nearly resembling the loud ticking of a 

 watch." It is essentially a rock bird, and is only at home on rocky shores. I 



Vol. V. U 



