lighter tint, on a greyish yellow ground, the spots being larger and closer towards the rounded end. Both
sexes incubate, and remain with their brood until the time o f their departure.”
The following passage is from the pen o f Mr. Thomas Nuttall, on the manners o f the species as observed
hy him m the neighbourhood o f Boston : w The Peet Weet is one o f the most familiar and common o f all
the New-England marsh-birds, arriving along our river-shores and low meadows about the beginning of
May, from their mild or tropical winter quarters in Mexico. As soon as it arrives on the coast, small roving
flocks are seen, a t various times o f the day, coursing rapidly along the borders of our tide-water streams
flying swiftly and rather low in circular sweeps along the meanders of the rock o r river, and occasionally
crossing from side to side, in rather a sportive and cheerful mien, than as the needy foragers they appear at
the close of the autumn.”
Mr. Stevenson, omits the Actitis maculanus from his ' List of the Birds o f Norfolk,’ questions the evidence
upon which a single example wai recorded by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher as having been killed at
Ronton, near Cromer, on th e.2 6 th o f September, 1839, and further states " I am the more desirous of
giving publicity to this fact since the claim of the Spotted Sandpiper to be included even in the list of
British Birds rested solely for some years upon this particular specimen as recorded by Yarrell.”
I t has sometimes been a question with me whether the spottings on the breast o f this bird are not purely
seasonal; for I have seen many individuals apparently adult, especially from Venezuela, from which they have
been absent : one thing is certain, the young during the first autumn have plain breasts, a t which stage of
their existence they closely assimilate to Actitis hypoleucos.
The Plate represents an adult male and female, and young in the plumage of the first autumn, all o f the
natural size.