IjS GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



The young are able to leave the nest by the loth of July. The 

 number reared in a nest is four or five. They follow their parents 

 until they assume the winter plumage, in the latter part of August 

 or September or even later. (Turner.) 



MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 



Two specimens taken by Mr. J. M. Macoun in Behring Sea in 

 1891 — one on St. Matthew Island and the other on Unimak Island. 



2 ST. Thick-billed Sandpiper. PrybiloflF Sandpiper. 



Tringa ptilocenemis Coues. 1873. 



Mr. H. W. Elliott, the discoverer of this species, speaking of its 

 range, says that besides the Prybiloff Islands, he found it just as 

 abundantly on St. Matthew Island in 1874, 200 miles to the north, 

 where it was breeding in large numbers as it does on the 

 Prybiloffs. A single pair was found nesting (by myself ) on the 

 south shore of St. Lawrence Island in June, 1881. Krause,in winter, 

 secured three specimens at Portage Bay, which is on the main- 

 land near the end of Chilcat Peninsula, but saw no large flocks 

 until April, so that it is probable they winter south along the 

 coast of Alaska and possibly British Columbia. {Nelson^ 



Breeding Notes. — I may say that this is the only wader that 

 incubates on the Prybiloff Islands, with the marked exceptions of 

 a stray couple now and then of Phalaropus hyfierboreus. It makes 

 its appearance early in May and repairs to the dry uplands and 

 mossy hummocks, where it breeds. The nest is formed by the 

 selection of a particular cryptogamic bunch. It lays four darkly- 

 blotched pyriform eggs, and hatches them within twenty days. 

 The young come from the shell in a thick, yellowish down, with 

 dark-brown markings on the head and back, getting the plumage 

 of their parents and taking to wing as early as the loth of August. 

 {Elliott.) 



MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 



One pair taken on St. Lawrence Island, Behring Sea, by Mr. 

 J.M. Macoun, on August 12th, 1891. 



238. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. 



Tringa acuminata (Horsf.) Swinh. 1863. 



On September 16th, 1877, near St. Michael, I had the pleasure of 

 securing a handsome young female of this bird, thus adding this 



