BRITISH BIRDS 



As the Ruff was held in high estimation for the table, large numbers were 

 regularly netted or taken in snares of horsehair at these places, and after having 

 been fattened in confinement were sold at high prices. 



The singular variety of pattern and colour in the plumage of the male birds is 

 extraordinary. 



The late Professor Newton, in his Dictionary of Birds, pp. 799-800, says : " It 

 has often been said that no one ever saw two Ruffs alike. That is perhaps an over- 

 statement ; but, considering the really few colours that the birds exhibit, the variation 

 is something marvellous, so that fifty examples or more may be compared without 

 finding a very close resemblance between any two of them, while the individual 

 variation is increased by the ' ear-tufts,' which generally differ in colour from the 

 frill, and thus produce a combination of diversity." Birds which are decorated with 

 a white tippet are said to be the rarest ; one of these is shown in the background of 

 the plate, taken from a specimen in the collection of Lieut. -Commander Millais. 



Before summer is far advanced, all the variously coloured feathers of these 

 decorative shields are shed, when the bird is not unlike the Reeve in appearance, 

 though larger. 



THE BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER. 

 Tringites rufescens (Vieillot). 

 Plate 67. 



The Buff-breasted Sandpiper, a native of America, seldom visits the British 

 Islands, only about eighteen having been recorded in England, and two or three in 

 Ireland. It breeds in the Arctic regions of North America and Asia, and ranges 

 far southward in winter to the warmer parts of America, Asia, and Africa. The 

 nest, placed on the ground, and, according to Macfarlane, hardly to be distinguished 

 from the Golden Plover's, contains four eggs, in colour buffish, occasionally tinged 

 with pale-olive, and blotched with deep umber and shell-markings of purplish 

 grey. 



The food consists chiefly of grasshoppers and other insects. The late H. E. 

 Dresser, in his Birds of Europe, says : " We generally met with them in small flocks 

 of from five or six to a dozen individuals, never near or on the edge of water, though 

 in some cases there were small ponds which swarmed with waders ; but they 

 frequented the grassy places, if any such were to be found, or were seen running 

 along in an irregular wavy line on the road or track made by the cotton-teams. . . . 



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