112 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 



and find interest in the thought that just as now 

 this bird may be seen, so in the old far-away 

 dynastic days it must have been a familiar bird, 

 or it would certainly not have been selected for 

 use in picture and hieroglyph. Some few breed 

 in Egypt, it is said ; but certainly the bulk all 

 go north and west when spring-time comes. This 

 is the bird that supplies gourmands with their 

 annual dainty of Plovers' eggs ; it lays four in 

 the simplest of nests — a mere slight depression in 

 the ground — and as soon as the young are hatched, 

 within a few hours of actual birth into the outer 

 world, they are running about nimbly on their own 

 little legs, and, at the instigation of their fond 

 parents, catching flies and insects with their own 

 little bills. In this matter of the helplessness, or 

 reverse, of newly-hatched birds, is a most interest- 

 ing field for research. The proud eagle's young are, 

 for a long time, as helpless as our own babies, and, 

 it is alleged, have sometimes to be forcibly pushed 

 out of the home ; whilst, as we have seen. Plovers' 

 young are born almost self-supporting. And this 

 precocity, as it seems, is also seen in young ducklings, 

 and in all the so-called game-birds : all they ask 

 for is their mother's wings to protect them against 

 the weather, and warmly shelter them at night. 



