•344 Pictures of Bird Life 



These two days convinced iis that onr best plan Avas 

 to go off to a distant forest, to the proprietor of which 

 we had introdnctions. and return in two or three days, 

 by whicli time we hoped that some of the other birds 

 woidd have begun to lay. 



After an interAal of foiu* days, we re\'isited both these 

 islands, finding many more eggs in them, and a few on 

 tlie mainland. The patcli of grass on the second island 

 was then full of nests, but even then many were still 

 empty. 



On iVlay 11th a Reeve was flushed from her nest of 

 four eggs, and a Black-tailed Godwit's nest was found Avitli 

 three pointed eggs of a greenish brown : the flrst I had 

 seen — as in Holland, wliere these birds are very common 

 in the meadows, 1 had always been too late for eggs. 



On tlie 13th another Reeve's was foimd, also with four 

 eggs, in the same patch ; and the same day a second nest 

 of the Black-tailed Godwit, with four eggs, was seen on the 

 mainland on short grass, on wliich tlie nest and eggs were 

 as open as a I^apwing's nest. 



Tlie marsh now held a fair number of nests, Avocets 

 and Redshanks chiefly, with full clutches of eggs. Here 

 also we got two nests of the Connnon (tuH. witli two eggs 

 each. These were on the ground at the edge of a broad 

 creek, studded with numbers of circular islands of turf, 

 on which the (tuIIs were sitting about : but tliough I 

 waded out to nearly all of them, no more nests were to 

 be found. 



