98 
be even on the main route of the spring and autumn migrations which, 
evidently, pass over the mountainous, eastern part of Baffin island. 
Access to the sea for food apparently determines the location of the route. 
At cape Dorset in the spring of 1925 the first wader observed was of 
this species and was a single bird seen on May 30. Except for a few bare 
patches the country was still deeply covered with snow, and the sea and 
lakes were covered with ice. On June 8 a solitary female was collected 
on a marshy flat near an open pond. The ovaries were considerably en- 
larged. A male was collected on one of Fox islands, in Gordon bay, on 
June 29. These three birds were all that were seen during the spring and 
summer of 1926, along the south coast of Baffin island. 
? J. C. Ross (1826, p, 101) records a few at port Bowen in early June, 
1825. Kumlien (1879, p. 87) says that hundreds were breeding near 
Annanactook, Cumberland sound, in the spring of 1878. Hantzsch (1914, 
p. 149) recorded the species as a migrant at Blacldead island, Cumberland 
sound, October, 1909. On June 17, 1910, he noted the first pair at Amittok 
lake. A single individual was observed at Koukjuak river on September 
11, 1910. Specimens and eggs were taken by the MacMillan expedition 
to southwest Baffin island, 1921-1922. 
51. Pisobia fuscicollis (Vieillot). white-rumped sandpiper. 
Eskimo : Levelivela; Livillividla, -ak-at, according to Hantzsch. 
The first white-rumped sandpipers observed in 1924 were seen on 
August 28 at Blacklead island, Cumberland. They were migrating south; 
two specimens were secured. A single specimen was taken on September 2, 
at the same place. An Eskimo brought a specimen which he had shot on 
September 12 in Pangnirtung fiord. Two days later a solitary bird was 
observed feeding along the seashore in the same locality. 
The species was next seen on June 10, 1925, at Nettilling lake, where 
a mated pair was flushed from a marshy upland near Takuirbing river. 
The sexual organs in both were fully developed, the female being almost 
on the point of laying. By June 14 the species had become quite common. 
The males practised their vocal performances on the wing immediately 
upon arrival. They rose to a height of about 60 feet, hovered with rapidly 
beating wings, and uttered their nuptial song in a very low tone at a slow 
tempo, the notes weak and inclined to be squeaky. The species appears 
to flush silently. 
A nest containing four eggs was found on June 16 on a grassy hummock 
near the lake. Many were subsequently found. The nests are merely 
shallow depressions on the crowns of tussocks of grass and mosses a few 
inches above the surrounding mud and water of the tundra. They are 
sparingly lined with blades of old grass and dead leaves of the dwarf 
Arctic willow, or as in some cases, exclusively with the dried leaves of 
Salix herbacea. According to collecting data, both sexes arrive together, 
with the female almost, if not quite, ready for immediate reproduction as 
evidenced by the condition of the ovaries. The nest of four eggs found on 
June 16 was seen only four days after the first observed arrivals of the 
species. 
The female upon one’s approach plays the familiar artifice, limping 
and dragging herself along the ground in an effort to divert one’s attention 
from the nest. In this they are fearless. If a person sits besides the 
nest they frequently will run up to within a foot or less of him. While 
