The ground color has considerable variation and shows two distinct types: The commoner one, the brown type, of which we found three sets is "Saccardo's olive"; and the other type, represented by a single set, is "greenish," shading to "bluish glaucous." The markings are bold, slightly elongated and seldom confluent, so that blotched markings are unusual. The eggs are medium to heavily spotted, causing the ground color to be conspicuous, and, in consequence, the underlying markings are very noticeable. The primary spots are in various shades of brown, namely: "Vandyke brown," "seal brown," and "Saccardo's umber," which make the egg one of unusual beauty. The underlying spots are "drab gray" to "light grayish olive" and are larger and more numerous than are found on the other limicoline eggs we collected at Hooper Bay.
In my set the ground colors vary from "dark olive buff" to "olive buff." Two of the eggs are irregularly spotted and blotched with spots of various sizes; one is quite evenly marked with small elongated spots; and another is sparingly spotted and blotched, chiefly about the larger end. The colors of the markings are "Saccardo's umber," "bister" and "warm sepia," with underlying markings of "deep" to "pale brownish drab." In other collections I have seen a number of sets that matched almost exactly certain types of heavily blotched eggs of the Wilson snipe; these may be within the normal range of dowitcher's eggs; but I have always been suspicious that some of them were wrongly identified. The measurements of 79 eggs average 41.8 by 28.9 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measures =45.5= by 30.5, 44 by =32=, =37.5= by 29.2 and 39.4 by =26.3= millimeters.
_Young._--H. B. Conover has sent me the following interesting notes:
Newly hatched young were found June 22nd. The incubation period seems to be about 20 days. A nest found by Murie on May 31 with two eggs, had four eggs on June 2, and on being visited the evening of June 22, was found to contain two young and two pipped eggs. The colors of the soft parts of a downy young several days old were as follows: Tarsus olive with blackish stripes down the sides, bill black, iris brown. In the newly hatched young the tarsus is much lighter. On June 23 while visiting the nest of a black-bellied plover, I came across a pair of dowitchers that from their actions appeared to have young. Not wishing to stop at the time, I passed on, but on returning several hours later, found them again in a marsh at the foot of a long, low hill. When I sat down to watch, one bird wheeled about me calling, and then flew off down the valley. The other bird at first I could not locate, but soon saw it flying about the hillside chirping. I noticed that as this bird passed over a certain spot, it would hover about 15 feet above the ground, giving a whistling trill. After a few minutes it dawned on me, that each time it hovered to give this call, it was a little farther up the hillside. When I moved up toward the top of the hill, the bird alighted close by, scolded for a while and then commenced the same performance as before. In this way in about half an hour the dowitcher and I had crossed the hill from one marsh to another, a distance of about 600 yards. During all this time its mate had appeared only twice, when it flew by calling and then disappeared again. Finally the bird I was following alighted in the marsh at the far side of the hill from where we had started, and began running short distances, stopping and then running on again. Watching through some field glasses, I soon saw a young one following at its heels. Rushing down suddenly, three downies were found hiding with their heads stuck into holes or depressions in the moss. They appeared to be several days old. Evidently the old dowitcher had led these young ones across the hill by simply hovering over or in front of them and calling. The bird was collected and proved to be a male. Just what the relation of the male and female to the eggs and young is in this species it is hard to say. From the experience above I believe the male does nine-tenths of the work in caring for the chicks. I think this will probably prove true as to the incubation of the eggs as well, but that the female takes some share in the hatching seems probable, as one collected in the vicinity of a nest showed incubation patches.