22 LOCAL OBSERVATION 



well up to their average dates. We have a good many 

 plovers' eggs here, and a good many from Green Bank. 

 There are, I am assured, two pairs of redshanks 

 nesting in Achurch meadow, but the eggs are as yet 

 undiscovered.^ 



" That hill-fox hunting is not bad fun, and I hope 

 that your party will kill all of them, and not send any 

 cubs south for sale alive. I shall be very glad indeed if 

 you can find a nest of goosanders * and send me one or 

 two eggs ; don't take them all. I should very much 

 like also some young mergansers alive. I suspect that 

 you will have to watch very close to find a nest of 

 goosanders among tree roots near water, or in a hollow 

 tree.^ 



" Four golden plovers in full summer plumage, with 

 black waistcoats, have been for some days haunting 

 Achurch and St. Peter's meadow ; but these golden plovers 

 do not lay till May, and of course the chances of their 

 doing so are very small, f but whatever their intentions 

 may be, they are evidently paired, and apparently 



1 To Walter M. Stopford, Esq. 



^ To the same. 



* The Goosander {Mergus /nerganser) and the Merganser (M. 

 serrator) belong to the tooth-billed division of the ducks, i.e., their 

 mandibles have a saw edge — a provision designed to enable them 

 to catch the fish on which they feed. They nest on the lochs in 

 the north of Scotland, where the former is by far the rarer bird of 

 the two. 



t The Golden Plover (Cliaradrius pluvialis) nests on high 

 moorlands and high, open hills. 



