SANDEELING 395 



The nests of the Sanderling are usually placed on the small 

 "islands" of stones and clay which are scattered over the tundras 

 and moors. The nest itself is a small depression sparsely lined on 

 the bottom with leaves of the arctic willow and other plants growing 

 in the vicinity. Egg-laying begins about June 20, and extends at 

 least until July 15. In eleven nests with eggs and fifty broods of 

 downy young observed by Manniche the complement was always four. 

 Until laying is completed the males accompany their mates, but when 

 incubation commences they join in small flocks of their own kind or 

 with other shore birds, and have usually left the country by mid-July. 



The female is exceedingly wary and will often fly to meet the 

 intruder more than a hundred yards from the nest and then try 

 various deceptions in order to toll him away. At night, or in very 

 cold weather, or when the incubation of the eggs is approaching com- 

 pletion, the female is more reluctant to leave, and her anxiety to 

 return often results in discovery of the nest. Sometimes, if surprised 

 on the nest, the female endeavors to escape detection by keeping per- 

 fectly still. Incubation lasts for twenty-three or twenty-four days, 

 and the egg shells are pipped as much as three days before the young 

 finally emerge. When the chicks are finally out the female carries 

 the remnants of the shells away from the nest. All the young emerge 

 within a few hours of one another, and as soon as the down on all of 

 them is sufficiently dry they quit the nest in company with the mother 

 bird and sometimes go as much as six hundred yards away within a 

 very short time. After the brood is out the female becomes even 

 more solicitous for her charges, and she increases her efforts at dis- 

 tracting the attention of any intruder when he approaches the vicinity 

 of the brood. Now she will go two or three hundred yards to meet 

 him and attempt to lead him off to one side. Meanwhile the brood 

 lies flat on the ground, and the coloration of their backs is such as 

 to make them very inconspicuous. "When the old bird returns and 

 utters a peculiar chirping sound the youngsters become active once 

 more. The young are full grown and able to fly within twelve or four- 

 teen days after they are hatched. Toward the end of July the females 

 desert their broods and begin to migrate south, but the former linger 

 and assemble into larger and larger flocks, then to follow their parents 

 (Manniche, loe. cit.). 



The food of the Sanderling consists of marine worms, minute shell- 

 fish, crustaceans of various sorts, and insects; and gravel has been 

 found in some of the stomachs examined. In its summer home it is 

 reported to feed upon the buds of the saxifrage (Baird, Brewer and 

 Ridgway, 1884, I, p. 250). When the birds have become fattened in 

 the fall they are said to be excellent eating. It is not known that 

 they have been shot by sportsmen or market hunters to any extent in 



