THE SPOTTED SANDPIPER 



Common Sandpiper, the 8th and 9th are nearly white." It is an uncommon visitor 

 to the British Islands, some seven or eight examples having been obtained, the last 

 of these in Sussex in May 1913. 



In summer it inhabits the northern parts of the New World, and migrates in 

 winter to Central and South America. In its general habits this species does not 

 appear to differ from our Common Sandpiper, and the four eggs are light buff 

 or cream colour, blotched and spotted with deep brown and underlying shell- 

 markings of grey. 



THE WOOD-SANDPIPER. 



Totanus glareola (J. F. Gmelin). 

 Plate 67. 



The Wood-Sandpiper visits England more or less regularly in autumn and in 

 smaller numbers in spring, though on the mainlands of Scotland and Ireland it is 

 seldom seen. Usually a bird of passage, it is supposed to have bred more than 

 once in Great Britain, but the only authentic nest known in this country was one 

 obtained by the late John Hancock on Prestwick Car, Northumberland, on June 



3 rd > !853- 



The Wood-Sandpiper breeds in various parts of Europe from Scandinavia south- 

 wards to Spain, and in Northern Asia south to China and Japan, in the winter 

 season migrating to the Mediterranean, Africa (as far as Cape Colony), India, 

 Ceylon, the Malay Archipelago, and Australia. 



The nest, placed on the ground generally in open moorland diversified by bogs 

 and marshy places, is usually nothing more than a little hollow in the soil, with a 

 scanty lining of bents. The four eggs are pale buff or light pale olive-green in 

 ground-colour, spotted and blotched with deep warm brown. 



Although this species will often perch on a post or dead bough of a tree, its 

 name seems inappropriate, as the bird is much less arboreal than its congener the 

 Green Sandpiper, to which in appearance it has a good deal of resemblance, yet the 

 birds may always be distinguished not only by the difference in the markings of the 

 tail, but by the axillaries, these in the Green Sandpiper being dark with narrow 

 bars of white, whereas in the present species they are white with dusky markings. 



In the breeding season the bird utters a succession of trilling notes, and per- 

 forms a courtship display ; commencing in the air and continued after settling on 

 its perch or on the ground. 



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