GREY PLOVER 



65 



helvetica (given on account of the circumstance that the specimens 

 first described came from Switzerland) is singularly inappropriate ; and 

 in the opinion of the present writer this is one of those cases where 

 a name should be changed on account of its unsuitableness. If such 

 a course were permissible, the grey plover would be known by the 

 title of Squatarola cinerea, which would be in every way suitable. In 

 the British Islands the grey plover is most familiar as a migrant, and 

 is more common on the return journey in autumn than in spring ; 

 nevertheless, a certain number of individuals remain to pass the winter 

 with us, while from May to July specimens in the black summer- 

 plumage — probably 

 non-breeding birds — 

 are occasionally seen. 

 August and Septem- 

 ber are the months 

 in which the arrival 

 of the young birds 

 from the frozen north 

 is to be expected ; the 

 parents not making 

 their appearance till 

 the two following 

 months, by which 

 date most of them 

 have assumed the 

 white-bellied winter- 

 plumage. The species 

 is nowhere so com- 

 mon in the British Islands as the true plover ; and in Ireland, as in 

 the west generally, is even less abundant than in other parts of the 

 British Islands. Except during the breeding-season and on migration, 

 the grey plover is mainly to be met with on the seashore and neigh- 

 bouring stretches of mud ; it is likewise more wary in disposition, and 

 from the greater difficulty of imitating its cry is less frequently deluded 

 within gunshot by the wiles of the fowler. The species breeds nowhere 

 within the British Islands, and the suggestion that it nests on the high 

 fells of Norway appears to lack confirmation. Eggs are still rare in 

 collections, the only examples possessed by the British Museum in 

 1902 being thirteen taken from the tundra in the neighbourhood of 

 the Petchora River between June 22 and July 12. Nest there is prac- 

 tically none, the four eggs being laid in a round and deep hollow, lined 



F 



GKEY PLOVER. 



