15° British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



but the central pair of feathers, and several imperfect dark bars on the external 

 ones; an indistinct white eyebrow; throat and fore neck white, shading into hair 

 brown on the sides of the head, the neck and upper breast with dark brown shaft 

 streaks; rest of under parts white {^'\ie.nc& " hypoleucus") ; legs and feet greenish- 

 grey; claws black. Length 8 to 8i inches, closed wing 4|. Female a little 

 smaller and less boldly marked. 



Adult in winter (Woochang, Yangtse River, 1880) is more uniform in colour, 

 the spots on the upper parts, throat, and breast, being reduced to linear shaft 

 stripes. The bird is seldom, if ever, seen in this dress in our country. 



Young birds (^ Yorkshire coast, 18, 8, '91, ? 22, 8, '84, etc.) have the upper 

 parts, especially the wing-coverts, narrowly barred with dark brown and sandy 

 bufif, and the chin and throat unstriped white. 



Nestling : hair-brown above, with a black stripe through the eye and another 

 from the beak, over the crown, and down the spine ; below dingy white ; legs 

 and feet greenish. 



The nest is often described as being amongst willow bushes, or even in corn- 

 fields, near a stream ; but in the North of England and Scotland, where I have 

 had a good many opportunities of seeing the nest, I have usually found it — quite 

 unconcealed — on the shingly wastes, dotted with grass patches, rushes, and a few 

 willow bushes, which are made by the winter floods of most of the rapid northern 

 streams and rivers — or else under a tuft of heather, rushes, or other coarse herbage 

 on the bank of a smaller burn. The nest in the former case has merely a little 

 dead grass as a lining; in the latter, generally dead leaves and moss as a basis, 

 with grass as a lining. The eggs, pyriform, four in number, very large for the 

 size of the bird, are of a light cream buff, spotted and blotched with two shades 

 of warm brown — coloured much like those of the Corncrake and Waterhen, in 

 fact. Length ij by i inch broad. I once found a single fresh &%^ of this bird 

 balanced on the top of a stone, by a Northumberland bum side, so exactly, that 

 I could not replace it except after several attempts. Common Sandpipers are very 

 solicitous when they have young, and both old birds are in attendance ; or. if not, 

 the second appears very soon after you do. Dresser states that the female 

 incubates ; I have no personal evidence to offer on this point, never having shot 

 the bird from the nest. 



The Common Sandpiper is a tame and pretty little bird, flitting, with 

 tremulous wing and tremulous pipe, about rocky and gravelly rivers, in spring 

 and summer. It appears in its breeding quarters about the end of April, and 

 leaves them at the end of August, being found on migration with us, especially 

 by the sea, till the end of the next month. While on the move, they seem to 



