50 PLOVER GROUP 



less striking dress, the black patch and white collars of the neck being 

 replaced by sandy brown, streaked with black. The plumage of the 

 hen is of the same sombre type, while that of the young birds shows 

 more dark bars on the flanks. The chick in down is pale fawn, with 

 blackish-brown markings above, and dull white beneath. 



Some fifty instances of the occurrence of this bird in the British 

 Islands are recorded, of which six are to be credited to Ireland ; but it 

 has never been known to breed there, winter being the season when 

 most of these instances occurred. The little bustard is a migratory 

 species inhabiting the south of Europe, the north of Africa, and 

 Central Asia, visiting north-western India in winter, and occasionally 

 straggling as far north as Scandinavia and St. Petersburg. 



The occurrence between the years 1847 and 1898 of five recorded 

 visits of the hubara bustard {Hubara viacqiieeni) to the British Islands 

 affords no sufficient grounds for including that species in the British 

 list. 



With the stone-curlew or thick-knee, which in some 



Stone-Curlew , , ^, , . , . , 



, „ modern works appears as Lbaicnenms cvaicneinus, and 



OP Thiek-Knee . ,, rrr^- 



_ , m older ones as Ctatcnevius crepttaus, we come to 



((Edienemus , . , . ^ .^ . 



the great group of plovers, snipes, etc., constitutmg 



the Limicolae, or Charadriiformes, as they are some- 

 times called. The group, like the last, is one exceedingly difficult to 

 define, since it is closely connected, on the one side by means of the 

 stone-curlews with the bustards, while on another it is affiliated 

 through the plovers with the sand-grouse, and so with the pigeons, 

 and in a third direction it is related very closely with the gulls, which 

 are themselves probably distant relations of the pigeons. 



All the members of the plover tribe are birds of more or less 

 completely terrestrial habits, with the beak very variable, but generally 

 slender, and having the nostrils situated in a groove or hollow on each 

 side. With the exception of the stone-curlews and one of the coursers, 

 where they are oval, as in the bustards, the nostrils are slit-like; and with 

 few exceptions, the leg is naked for some distance above the first joint. 

 Except in the stone-curlew, the feathered tract on the fore part of the 

 back is forked ; the feathers are furnished with after-shafts of varying 

 size ; there are eleven primary quills to the wings, as in the Grallae ; 

 there is a tufted oil-gland, which distinguishes them from the bustards ; 

 and the intestine is furnished with a pair of blind appendages. As a 

 rule, there is one notch on each side of the lower border of the breast- 

 bone, although there may be two ; and by this character the group is 



