548 GOLDEN PLOVER. 



" Stands " visit the coasts from early in autumn onwards, especially 

 when the light of the moon enables them to feed by night. 



In summer the Golden Plover has been found on Jan Mayen and 

 in Greenland; while it is a regular visitor to Iceland, the Fjeroes 

 and Northern Europe, and breeding as far south as the moors of 

 Brabant, Luxembourg, Germany, and sparingly in Switzerland. 

 Over the rest of the Continent it occurs on migration, passing the 

 cold season in the basin of the Mediterranean, and wandering to 

 Madeira as well as down the coast of Africa to Cape Colony. It 

 visits Novaya Zemlya, and' inhabits the tundras of Siberia as far 

 east as the Yenesei, but there the smaller C. dominiciis (the subject 

 of the next article) predominates, and becomes its representative in 

 Eastern Siberia. In winter our Golden Plover has been found in 

 Turkestan, Baluchistan and Sind. 



The slight and scantily-lined depression which serves for a nest is 

 usually in short grass or heather, though often where the ground is 

 quite bare ; the eggs, 4 in number, are large in proportion to the 

 size of the bird, and are of a yellowish stone-colour handsomely 

 blotched and spotted with rich brownish-black : measurements 2 by 

 I "4 in. Incubation, in which the male takes an important part, 

 commences towards the end of April even on the bleak moors of 

 Northumberland, but is later in Northern Europe ; the young run 

 as soon as they are hatched, though unable to fly for a month or five 

 weeks. The food consists of insects and their larvae, worms, slugs, 

 small molluscs, the fry of the common mussel, and a little vegetable 

 matter. The note is a clear whistling tliii^ often heard by night over 

 large towns at the times of passage ; the spring-call being described 

 by Mr. Abel Chapman as tirr-pce-you. 



In spring the adult male has the forehead white ; crown, nape 

 and mantle blackish, profusely spotted with gamboge-yellow, the 

 markings on the inner secondaries being of an oak-leaf pattern ; 

 tail barred with brown ; above the eye a white line which continues 

 down each side to the neck and even to the flanks ; under parts 

 black ; axillaries white ; bill, legs and feet black ; no hind-toe. 

 Length 11 in. ; wing 7-5 in. The female has usually less black 

 on the breast. After the autumnal moult the under parts are white, 

 tinged with dusky yellowish-brown on the breast, and the upper parts 

 are more yellow than they are in spring, when the breast becomes 

 black: sometimes by the end of February in England. The young 

 resemble their parents in winter-plumage, but are still yellower above; 

 the flanks are more mottled, and the tips of the axillaries are often 

 spotted with ash-brown, although the bases of those feathers are white. 



