Spring.—There is an adult male in nuptial plumage in the British Museum, which was taken at Shanghai, China, in April. The only other information we have about the spring migration is the following brief statement by Dr. E. W. Nelson (1883):
On the northeast coast of Siberia Nordenskiold records this bird as occurring in such numbers that on two occasions in spring it was served upon their mess table on board the "Vega" while they were lying frozen in at their winter quarters. It arrived in spring at Tapkau, with the first bare spots, early in June, and disappeared in July. To the westward, in the same vicinity, during the summer of 1881, I saw several of these birds, and at Plover Bay, on the Bering Sea shore of the same coast, secured a fine adult female in breeding plumage, taken on June 26. Nothing peculiar was observed in its habits, and I approached the bird without difficulty or its showing the slightest concern as it stood on the flat at that place. The bird was first seen feeding in the shallow water at the edge of a pool, and then stood with its head drawn back and without paying the slightest attention to me until it was shot.
Courtship.—Mr. Dixon (1918) has made a thorough study of this species and has given us a fine account of its interesting song flight, illustrated by a diagram, from which I quote, as follows:
The song and nuptial flight of the male spoonbill, attractive as they were to the collector, in sight of such rare birds at last, were as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp. In fact we were never able to locate a female spoonbill on the nest, and I have always believed that our lack of success in this regard was due to the warning given by the male. Upon approaching the nest site, while we were yet afar off, we were greeted by the male in full song. This song, ventriloquial, pulsating, and cicadalike in quality, seemed to come first from one and then from another point in the heaven above. Sometimes we searched the sky altogether in vain, but usually the bird was discovered in rapid flight at an altitude of two or three hundred feet above the earth. The nuptial flight consists of momentary poises alternating with rapid dips. When the bird hovers or poises, the rapid beating of the wings is accompanied by a fine, rhythmical, pulsating, buzzing trill, zee-e-e, zee-e-e, zee-e-e, rapidly repeated. Following this the bird approaches the intruder, swinging down in a sharp curve until 10 feet lower than the previous hovering point, where he again poises on rapidly beating wings, pouring forth anew his insistent, musical trill. After repeating this performance four or five times the songster sweeps down in a long graceful curve until he almost touches the earth near his brooding mate, then curving off, he turns and rises rapidly and almost perpendicularly until almost out of sight. From this new point of vantage the whole performance is repeated. After four or five such excursions, in each of which the intruder is approached from a different direction, the guardian of the nest descends by raising his wings nearly vertically until they form in anterior outline the letter V. The bird thus gliding on motionless wings drops lightly but quickly to earth, uttering the zee-e-e in a richer yet more subdued tone. As soon as he touches the earth the song ceases and the silent bird trots quietly off over the moss, where his trim form blends with the lichen and mossy tussocks, so that, upon remaining motionless, he disappears with amazing rapidity. Time and time again we thus lost sight of the birds, which we later discovered by the aid of binoculars to be standing or squatting motionless within 50 feet of us. Although this "fading out" method of exit is commonly employed by many shore birds, in the case of the spoonbilled sandpiper it seems to have been developed to an extreme degree.
Nesting.—To F. E. Kleinschmidt is due the credit for finding the first nest of the spoonbill sandpiper near Cape Serdze, northeastern Siberia, on July 15, 1910. The nest and the four eggs, which were nearly hatched, are now in the collection of Col. John E. Thayer. The following extract from Captain Kleinschmidt's letter in regard to it was published by Colonel Thayer (1911):
I was in hopes that I could get five or six clutches of the spoonbills, so I took all kinds of chances with my boat in the ice on the Siberian coast. I found, however, but one set of eggs and they were just ready to hatch. The male is the parent bird of the eggs, but the female belongs to neither eggs nor downies, simply because the habits of this sandpiper are similar to those of the phalarope. The male has to stay at home, keep house, and attend to the young, while the female thinks she has done all that is necessary by merely fulfilling the duties nature demands of her, namely, the laying of the eggs. I shot the female in close proximity of the nest, but we never found a female with the downies. It was always the male. Although our observations were limited to but a few, still I believe the male solely attends to the hatching and the rearing of the young. The female also is larger than the male. The nest as well as the downies were found on the gentle slope of the tundra, bordering small fresh-water ponds. The nest was a rounded hollow in the moss, thickly lined with dry willow leaves. The downies blend so perfectly with the color of the moss that the closest scrutiny will scarcely reveal their hiding place.
Mr. Dixon (1918) found a nest, with two fresh eggs, near Providence Bay, Siberia, on June 22, 1913, and one, with three young just hatched, near Cape Serdze, on July 17, 1913. Regarding his experience with it, he writes:
The two nests of this bird that came under the author's observation were discovered through flushing the brooding male. The birds were very shy, and as there was no cover other than a thin growth of grass about 6 inches high approach by stealth was difficult. The birds usually sneaked off while the observer was 40 or 50 yards distant, and in order to find the nest it was necessary to hide, as best one could, near the place where the sandpiper had flushed, until it returned again to the nest. In one instance a depression partly filled with water was the only available hiding place. Fortunately for the watcher the water was not cold and the male bird returned in 12 minutes to the nest, which contained two fresh eggs. The nest of this sandpiper was found to be merely a cavity scratched out among the dead grass blades. It was a shallow affair placed where the grass grew thickest. On June 22, 1913, at Providence Bay, the writer witnessed the construction of a nest from a distance of about 40 feet. The bird, a male, scratched and then picked at the dead and matted grass blades and moss until he had dug out quite a hole. Then he squatted down in the depression and twisted about, pressing against the moss that formed the sides of the nest, until a cavity about 3½ inches in diameter and an inch deep was formed. Dead leaves from a creeping Arctic willow that grew in the moss near-by were used to line the nest.