EROLIA FERRUGINEA (Brünnich)
CURLEW SANDPIPER
Contributed by Francis Charles Robert Jourdain
HABITS
The curlew sandpiper is only an occasional visitor to America, and with the exception of a single record from Point Barrow all the recorded instances have been reported from the eastern side of the Continent. It has been met with in Canada on two occasions, about ten times in the Eastern States, twice in the West Indies and once in Patagonia.
Courtship.—Very few observations on this species have been made on its breeding grounds in eastern Siberia, so our information as to its courtship is still very defective. The late Dr. H. Walter, during his enforced detention on the Taimyr Peninsula, from September, 1900, to August, 1901, while frozen in on board the exploring ship "Sarja," noted that they arrived on the Peninsula on June 13, and from that date onward were to be met with chasing one another in little parties of three or four over the tundra. There is no mention of any song flight (as in Crocethia alba, Erolia temminchii, Arquatella maritima, Calidris canutus, etc.).
Nesting.—The usual nesting place is on the gentle slope of the drier tundra, where the reindeer moss is interspersed with tufts of wiry grass and allowing a wide field of view over the neighborhood. Miss Haviland (1915a) noted that the actual nest hollow was rather deep, so that the pointed ends of the eggs were pointed downwards almost vertically. Walter describes them as shallow depressions, lined with a few dry bents, but H. L. Popham (1898) also remarks that "the nest was a rather deep hollow amongst the reindeer moss in an open space on a ridge of ground, somewhat drier than the surrounding swampy tundra, in much the same sort of place as that generally chosen by a grey plover."
Although Middendorff undoubtedly met with birds about to breed, and indeed extracted a partly developed egg from the oviduct of a female which he had shot on the Boganida River in latitude 74° N., no one had actually found the nest of this species till Mr. H. Leyborne Popham (1898) visited the lower reaches of the Yenesei in 1897. Two years previously (August, 1895), he had met with family parties on the delta and had shot young which must have been reared in the neighborhood. On July 3, 1897, finding the way below Golchika blocked by the ice, he turned back to explore an island of soft tundra with a rocky shore. One of his men called out that he had seen a sandpiper and at once, according to his own words:
I sent the other two men away and lay down to watch the bird, which stood still for some time, then flew some distance away and I lost sight of it among some turnstones. We again saw the bird near the same spot, so Hansen and I lay down to watch while the mosquitoes did their worst. The bird stood for some time watching us and then began running about; it was very difficult to keep it in sight for it took advantage of every little hollow to run in and every little ridge to hide behind. It then flew to another place and did the same thing again, so I asked Hansen to get up and walk away. The bird remained quite motionless, watching him go, and then ran backwards and forwards and finally stopped still behind a small tuft of grass. After waiting for some minutes I raised my head slightly; the bird instantly flew off and stood watching, but, as it saw nothing moving, it began running about again and settled down in the same spot; then I felt sure I had a nest safe, but to make doubly sure I went through the same performance again, a shower of rain no doubt hastening matters, and this time I distinctly saw the bird shuffle the eggs under it. I jumped up, shot the bird as it ran away, and soon had the pleasure of looking at the first authentic eggs of the curlew sandpiper. The bird, which proved to be the female, remained silent throughout; at one time I thought I heard it make a sound like a dunlin, but, as I afterwards saw dunlins close by, I was probably mistaken.
The next news comes from the Russian explorers who wintered on the coast of the Taimyr Peninsula in 1900-1901. In Doctor Walter's posthumous notes he writes that the curlew sandpiper nested in numbers near his winter quarters. The nests were placed in grassy places and by mid-June (old style) contained full clutches. On the approach of anyone the sitting birds, warned by their mates, left the nests quickly and both birds remained very passive and unobtrusive. Usually a long wait was necessary before the female returned to the nest, and often the watch resulted in failure. Some individuals also wander about in flocks through the breeding season, and later on young and old collect in large flocks and stay till late in the autumn. Doctor Walter collected three clutches of eggs here, and another Russian naturalist, Dr. Katin Jartzew, also took several on Kotelni Island, in the New Siberian Isles, in 1902. Since that date the only information we have received is that furnished by Miss Haviland (Mrs. Brindley), who visited the delta of the Yenesei in 1914. In her account (1915) of her travels she writes: