ORNITHOLOGICAL VISIT TO THE FJEBOES. 89 



Common Snipe (Gallinago coelestis). Native name, " Mujres- 

 nujpa." — Fairly plentiful, rather more so than in this country. 

 Two nests found by flushing, each containing four eggs. One of 

 these was placed in a rather unusual position in the side of a 

 bank almost facing a wall. One lot of young on June 11th still 

 in the nest. 



Purple Sandpiper (Tringa striata). Native name, " Fjadl- 

 murra." — This species was the principal object of our visit, but 

 it was not until the seventh day of our stay that we succeeded in 

 coming across the interesting and beautiful bird. We had, in 

 fact, almost given up all hopes of finding it, but eventually had 

 unique opportunities of studying its habits. Only on one of 

 the islands visited did we find them. They must have diminished 

 in numbers considerably since the time of Miiller, and Col. 

 Feilden's visit in 1872, for he says : " Pairs of these interesting 

 birds are to be found breeding throughout the islands " (Zool. 

 1872, p. 3250). It is now a rare breeding species, though we 

 found altogether seven broods of young ; they were all confined 

 to an area of about a square mile. We did not succeed in 

 finding a nest with eggs. It was the evening of June 10th, on 

 our way home, and feeling somewhat disappointed at our bad 

 luck, that we saw our first Purple Sandpiper. I saw a bird rise 

 and settle again just in front of me ; I immediately fixed my 

 glasses, and identified it as our long-sought-for Purple Sand- 

 piper. I hailed my companion, who came over to me, and we im- 

 mediately lay down to watch the bird, which was not more than 

 fifteen yards away. We had not been down more than a minute 

 or so before the bird commenced running, and after a series of 

 these little spurts it sat down, as we thought, on the nest, but, in 

 order to make sure, it was arranged to give it five minutes before 

 commencing our search, when, to our surprise and disappoint- 

 ment, we saw a downy youngster run towards where she was then 

 standing. After examining the bird with our glasses, we rose 

 and approached with the intention of catching the young bird, 

 which we succeeded in doing, and were then rewarded with one 

 of/ the most pitiful sights in bird-life one could wish to witness, 

 for never had we seen so much anxiety displayed by the parents 

 of any other species. We were very carefully handling and 

 examining the downy creature when the parent bird made a 



