393- ALLEn’s NATURAtlSx’S LIBRARY. 
syllables iye-tye-lye, which, when the bird is alarmed, becomes 
a loud excited tyuk-tyiik-tyiikP 
Nest — The present species has the curious habit of nesting 
on trees, at a height from three to thirty feet above the ground. 
Mr. Seebohm states that, although it does not build a nest of 
its own, its eggs are placed in the fork of a tree-trunk, on the 
leaves, or lichen and moss which may have accumulated there. 
The eggs have been found in the old nests of the Song- 
Thrush, Mi.stle-Thrush, and Fieldfare, while those of the Ring- 
Dove, Jay, Red-backed Shrike, and even old Crows’ nests 
or deserted Squirrel’s dreys have been utilised by the Green 
Tattler. He writes : — “On the 30th of May, 1882, as I was 
walking in a forest about twenty miles south of Stolp in Pome- 
rania, with my friend Dr. Holland, we passed a small sw'amp, 
where a Green Sandpiper attracted our attention by its loud 
cries. A few stunted larches and alder-bushes still grew in the 
swamp, and the bird flew from branch to branch and bush to 
bush in the most excited manner, having, no doubt, young for 
whose safety it was so anxious. Hintz says that he has known 
the nest to be in a hole in a fallen tree-trunk, on the stump of a 
felled or broken-down tree, but most commonly in old nests from 
three to twelve feet from the ground, though, on one occasion, 
he took the eggs from an old Squirrel’s nest in a birch tree at 
a height of thirty feet.” It would be interesting to know the 
way in which the old birds carried their young to the ground 
from such an elevation. 
Eggs. — Four in number. The ground-colour varies from 
greenish-white to pale clay and stone-colour ; the overlying spots 
are chocolate or reddish-brown, and are distributed over the 
entire surface, but more numerously at the larger end; the 
underlying spots are of a purplish-grey, and are equally dis- 
tributed. Axis, i'5-i'6s ; diam., i‘05-i'2. 
n. THE SOLITARY TATTLER. HELODROMAS SOLITARIUS. 
Tringa solitaria, Wilson, Amer. Orn. vii. p. 53, pi. 58, fig. 3 
(1813). 
Totanus solitarius, B. O. U. List Brit. B. p. 175 (1883); See- 
bohm, Hist. Brit. B. iii. p. 130 (1885); Saunders, Man, 
Brit. B. p. 597 (1889) ; Lilford, Col. Fig. Brit. B, part xxvi. 
(i893)' 
