BUFF-BREASTED SANDPIPER. 
^33 
a proof how wide it wanders, this species has also been rarely 
obtained even in France and England, and a specimen figured 
in the Linnsean Transactions of London is there given as a 
new addition to the fauna of Great Britain. It was shot in 
September, 1826, in the parish of Melbourne, Cambridgeshire, 
in company with the Siberian Plover, or Guignard ( Charadrius 
morinellus') . 
Its food while here consists principally of land and marine 
insects, particularly grasshoppers, which, abounding in the 
autumn, become the favorite prey of a variety of birds ; even 
the Turnstone at this season, laying aside his arduous employ- 
ment, is now content to feed upon these swarming and easily 
acquired insects. 
This Sandpiper is distributed throughout North America, breed- 
ing in Arctic and Sub-arctic regions. It is a rather rare visitor to 
this northeastern section, though more frequently seen in the 
aurnmn than during the spring migrations, the bulk of the flocks 
going north by the we.stern inland routes, and nesting on the dry 
plains in the Barren Ground region, adjacent to the Mackenzie and 
Anderson Rivers. These birds must migrate very rapidly and 
make hut few halts ; for while they are quite abundant on their 
nesting-ground, they are rarely seen while migrating. They range 
in winter through the West Indies and southward as far as Brazil 
and Peru. 
The Buff-breasted Sandpiper is a bird of the dry upland rather 
than of the marsh or the sandy beach. Its principal food consists 
of insects, — beetles, grasshoppers, and such ; but it varies its diet 
with small marine forms, and does not object to an occasional 
meal of small fruit and berries. The birds are very tame, and are 
usually met with in small flocks of ten or fifteen. The note, which 
IS generally heard as the bird rises from the ground, is a low tweet, 
repeated several times. 
