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BROAD-BILLED SANDPIPER.
Tringa piatyrhyncha, GOULD. TEMMINCK.
Tringa— t Pkttyrkyncha. Flatus—Broad.
Rhumtips—A beak, or bill.
E v k n on tbe continent tins appears to be a rather rare species, but
it has been met with in the north in Norway and Lapland, as well
as southwards in Germany, I t a l y , and France, and likewise in Switzerland,
according to Schinz, a naturalist whose great merits appear
to me to be by no means so well known in this country as they
should be. According to M. Temminck it is also found on several of
the islands of the Indian Archipelago—Borneo, Sumatra, and Timor,
for instance.
With us one was killed in Norfolk upon one of the flats of Breydou
Broad, near Yarmouth, on the 85th. of May, 1SJG; and one near
Shoreham, Sussex, in October, 1845, as recorded in the 'Zoologist,'
page 1394, by W. Horror, Esq. Another near Bedford.
In Ireland it has once been obtained near Belfast.
They arc wild and shy in their habits, except towards the nesting
time, when their manners entirely change, and they skulk about in
the neighbourhood, and, if t h e y fly at all, soon settle down again. They
keep together in small colonies, and frequent tin' borders of small
pools and lakes in the midst of wild morasses, where they are but
seldom able to be detected, and these even on very elevated ground,
as much as three thousand feet above the level of the sea. They mix
on the shore with other species.
If disturbed at ordinary times, they soar to a great height in the a i r .
The note resembles t h e syllables ' t o o whoo,' quickly repeated.
I t is late in laying its eggs; they have been found not yet sat upon
on the 24th. of J u n e , and the young still unable to fly the last week
in the following mouth. The nest is placed in a hummock of grass.