382 THE BIRDS OF KENT 



a pair of Ringed Plovers at exactly the same spot where 

 I saw them on the 18th ; they were probably the same 

 pair. Their incessant cry or whistle was a plaintive 

 pip-pip or wip-7vip, I could not determine which. This 

 I took to be the note of anxiety, and it was repeated 

 incessantly. Only two or three times during the half- 

 hour I watched them did the note change, and then it 

 was purlin or wurlin. At each utterance the black 

 crescent-like gorget heaved up and down, and my friend 

 thought the piping note was produced without any 

 opening of the mandibles, but I could not ascertain this 

 myself. So quickly did their little feet move over the 

 pebbles that every now and then a faint clatter was 

 audible as a stone vv^as overturned. From this habit 

 of theirs they gain the local cognomen of ' Stone-runners.' 

 Only two or three times did either bird pick anything up 

 with its beak ; they were evidently not intent on feeding. 

 Their attitude ail along was that of anxiety. Every now 

 and then one would stop and perch itself on the top of 

 one of the larger stones, and proceed to scratch its beak 

 or head with its foot, and as often as not almost toppling 

 over in its endeavours to preen itself and maintain its 

 balance on one foot at the same time. Now one bird 

 begins to move in a series of short, sharp runs from 

 one end of a pebbly ridge to the other — say, about 20 

 yards — and gradually it comes nearer, and it strikes me 

 that it is zigzagging, or rather, perhaps, lessening the 

 distance between itself and me by a series of ever- 

 decreasing radii, with the nest as the centre. Such 

 proves, more or less, to be the case, for, on rising and 

 looking carefully over these thousands and thousands of 

 pebbles, I almost tread on the motionless squatting" form 

 of a Ring-Plover chick. It seems a weakling, and likely 



