BLACK-HEADED PLOVER 117 



still to be seen by those going up or down by 

 water. Mr. E. Cavendish Taylor, writing in 1867, 

 says, "This bird is abundant all along the Nile 

 above Cairo, wherever the banks of the river are 

 muddy." Captain Shelley in 1870, referring to it, 

 says, " It is plentifully distributed throughout 

 Egypt and Nubia, but it is most abundant in 

 Upper Egypt between Siool and Thebes." I 

 myself saw it many times in 1875, whilst going up 

 and returning, in good quiet-fashioned way, by 

 dahabeah ; but when I again went over the same 

 ground in 1908, although going very slowly and 

 stopping every day, I only find, from my notebook, 

 that we saw it three or four times in our six weeks' 

 journey from Thebes to Cairo. All that we saw 

 were wild and anything but the confiding birds one 

 has been taught to regard them. I think by far 

 the most notable thing about this bird is its curious 

 habit of laying its eggs on the sand, and then care- 

 fully burying them with the clear purpose of letting 

 the genial sun do the bulk of the work of hatching 

 out. Captain Verner gives a most interesting and 

 detailed account of watching the movements of one 

 of these birds on a sandbank. He went to the place, 

 he writes, " And at the precise spot turned over the 

 sand, and about half an inch below the surface 



