152 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



Family— SCOL OP A CID^, 



Wood Sandpiper. 



Totanus glareo/a, GmeL. 



I CANNOT quite agfree with many authorities on British Birds, when they 

 describe the Wood Sandpiper as only an occasional visitor to our shores. 

 When I used to visit the Yorkshire coast almost annually to watch the migrations 

 of birds, I found this species there every year, though not in great numbers ; 

 still, I have no doubt that I could have obtained fifty specimens, or more, in the 

 course of ten or fifteen years. But it seems scarce except on the east coast, and 

 only one example has been obtained in Ireland. It breeds from North Norway 

 to Kamtschatka, chiefly in the extreme north, but occasionally in the valley of the 

 Danube and North Italy ; Saunders shot a female in Central Spain which had 

 been recently incubating.* It winters in Africa, India, Indo-Malaya, and Austral- 

 asia. With us, the Wood Sandpiper's nest was once taken by Hancock, in 

 Northumberland, and eggs have been obtained near Elgin. It is very much like 

 the next species, externally, which, on the occasions when it rises silently, may 

 easily be taken for a bird of the present species ; but the two are easily separated 

 when in the hand, by the colour of the long axillary feathers. 



Description of adult in breeding dress (Dovre-fjeld, $$^, June, 1882; ?, 

 Russian Lapland, June, '95) : bill blackish, browner at base ; iris umber-brown ; 

 crown sooty-black, with obscure whitish margins to the feathers ; back and wings 

 sooty-black, the white margins taking the form of spots, except on the primaries, 

 which are quite plain (with a white shaft to the first onlyj , and the secondaries, 

 which are tipped with white ; upper tail-coverts white, except the few long ones 

 next the tail, which are barred with dark grey ; tail white, with about six bold 

 sooty bars across each feather ; in some individuals (probably last year's birds — 

 but the peculiarity is, at all events, neither a sexual nor seasonal one) the two 

 central tail feathers have the white interspaces clouded with brown ; eyebrow and 

 sides of face brownish- white, the latter minutely spotted with brown ; a dark 

 streak from bill to ear-coverts through the eye ; chin and throat white, as also 



* Styau describes it as a "common spring and autumn migrant," in the Lower Yangtse Basin, "ver)- 

 rarely found in winter." 



