PRATINCOLE 57 



(except of course its immediate allies) that there would be every excuse 

 for an amateur not recognising it as such. The plumage of the two 

 sexes is alike ; the upper-parts being clove-brown in colour, with the 

 tips of the secondary quills, the tail-coverts, and the base of the tail 

 white, the throat buff margined with black (giving rise to the name 

 collared pratincole), the breast buff, and the remainder of the undcr- 

 parts white. In immature birds, on the other hand, the back is 

 mottled and starred with grey, and the breast striped with dark brown ; 

 this being doubtless the ancestral plumage of the group. In the down- 

 clad chicks the general colour is clove-brown, with darker mottlings 

 above, and white beneath. 



Only twenty specimens of the pratincole are recorded as having 

 visited the British 

 Islands during the 

 nineteenth century, 

 two of which were 

 from Scotland and its 

 islands, while one 

 alone falls to the share 

 of Ireland. Another 

 example was, how- 

 ever, taken in Kent 

 in 1903. 



All these birds 

 frequent the shores 

 of rivers and lakes, 

 where, in common 

 with so many mem- pratincole. 



bers of the plover 



tribe, the old birds resort to the ruse of being maimed in order to 

 divert attention from their eggs or young. In addition to this, 

 they exhibit in a marked degree the death -feigning instinct, 

 frequently lying flat on the ground with the wings extended in an 

 apparently helpless condition. As these birds have never been known 

 to breed in Britain, it will be unnecessary to allude to their eggs. 



In the year 1903 four specimens of the black-winged pratincole 

 {Glareola melanopterd) were taken in England, two in Kent, and two 

 in Sussex, these being the first recorded examples of that species from 

 Great Britain. Such a visitation affords, of course, no valid grounds 

 for the inclusion of the black-winged pratincole in the proper British 

 list. In South ^Africa this species preys largely on locusts, and is in 



