282 



CHARADHIIN.B. 



The Lilack-fronted Dotterel's eggs are laid on the bare ground, their protective colour 

 assinlilating closely to their surroundings ; in no instance, however, are they more difficult to 

 discover than when laid in the dry bed of a creek or river covered with small rounded-oval stones 

 about the same size and colour as the eggs, and a favourite situation for this species to select. 

 These birds, too, do not so easily betray the whereabouts of their eggs or young as does the 

 Ked-capped Dotterel, which is often found breeding in the same localities, for only on rare 

 occasions, when the former had young, have I known the Black-fronted Dotterel to resort 

 to the device of feigning to have a disabled wmg and lie fluttering on the ground. On 

 the Mehi Kiver, in November, 1897, I discovered two nests in the dry bed of a creek covered 

 with stones about the same shape, size and colour of the Dotterel's eggs. Mr. Thos. P. Austin 

 and I, in October, 1909, on Cobborah Station, searched in a similar situation, but were 



unsuccessful, although two nests were found 

 during my stay on a stony rise near the Tal- 

 bragar River, the eggs being surrounded with 

 a ring of very small pebbles, and another away 

 from the water in the centre of a short-grassed 

 sheep paddock ; in the latter instance there 

 were a very few small pebbles, and some short 

 pieces of dried grass. This nesting-place with 

 eggs, which was in one of Mr. B. C. Cox's 

 paddocks, I photographed on the i6th October, 

 1909, and is here reproduced. As a rule the nest- 

 ing-site is near water, although very fre(]uently 

 in short-grassed paddocks well away from it. 

 All the nests found in my early collecting days 

 in .Mbert Park, near Melbourne, were some two 

 or three hundred yards from the water, and 

 never near the lake. 



NRSriNG-PLACB AND E(ii;S OF TIIK BLACK-FRONTED 

 DOTTKKEL. 



The eggs are almost invariably three, rarely two in number for a sitting, and vary from oval 

 to pyriform and short oval in form, sometimes abruptly pointed at the smaller end, the shell being 

 close-grained, smooth and lustreless. The ground colour varies from cream to a light creamy- 

 white, and which is more or less obscured by numerous small irregular-shaped angular markings, 

 spots and fine short wavy lines of black or blackish-brown, with which are intermingled fewer 

 and fainter underlying markings of dull bluish or inky-grey. On some specimens the inarkings 

 are very fine and closely interlaced together uniformly over the shell, almost obscuring the 

 ground colour ; on others they are larger and more thickly disposed towards the larger end, 

 where they occasionally form a well-defined cap or zone. Of a set of three now before me two 

 have well-defined caps on the larger ends and on the other the markings are more thickly 

 disposed on the smaller end. A set of three taken by Mr. George Sa\idge at Copmanhurst, New 

 South Wales, on the 28th August, 189'), measures: — Length (A) ri x 0-83 inches; (B) i-o8 x 

 o'85 inches; (C) i*i x o"83 inches. Another set of three in the Australian Museum Collection, 

 taken by Mr. Savidge on the 6th September, 1901, measures: — Length (A) 1-12 x o-8i inches; 

 (B) I-I2 X 0-8 inches ; (C) i'o6 x 0-84 inches. A set of three I took on Cobborah Station, 

 Cobbora, on the 18th October, igog, measures: — Length (A) I'li x o-8 inches; (B) n x 0"8 

 inches; (C) i-i x 0-82 inches. I have seen the eggs of this species in collections from nearly 

 all parts of Australia. 



August until the end of January constitutes the usual breeding season in Eastern Australia, 

 but these birds may also be found with eggs or young after rain again in the latter summer 

 months and early autumn. 



