404 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



Grey Plover. — Arrive mid-September, all young birds 

 — never an adult among - them — and many winter here. 

 The old birds clearly take a different course from the 

 young at this season ; and it is noteworthy that the two 

 or three summer-plumaged examples that have exception- 

 ally been recorded on this coast, were shot in August — 

 a month earlier than the young arrive, a reversal of the 

 rule with this species. These had probably lost their 

 broods — and subsequently lost their way ! 



Grey plovers never pack, ten or a dozen being the 

 maximum number usually seen together. Their disposi- 

 tion is sociable rather than gregarious as a species ; 

 since every great cloud of knots, dunlins, etc., has the 

 company of two or three grey plovers. I have noticed 

 them associating with nearly all the different waders ; 

 even with half-a-dozen ringed plovers on the rocks. 

 These are distinguishable by their note from golden- 

 plovers : the latter, however, only appear on the salt- 

 slakes, in winter, when driven thereto by snow and severe 

 weather inland. The grey plovers, on the contrary, never 

 leave the tidal area. 



Ruff and Reeve.' — All that I have seen or heard of 

 have been young birds, obtained in August and September, 

 on passage. This species would, nevertheless, come here 

 every spring to breed, were there spared any marshy 

 corners suitable to its requirements. 



Those of my readers who have had the patience to 

 follow me through the last ten or a dozen paragraphs, not 

 excluding some ornithologists, must have been struck 

 by the extraordinary and anomalous disparity in habit 

 exhibited by a group of birds so closely related and other- 

 wise similar. No two agree. In some the old arrive 



