74 



PLOVER GROUP 



being usually confined to the coast, although sometimes wandering 

 inland, probably on migration. During spring and summer the birds 

 keep in pairs ; and the eggs are reputed to be more difficult to distinguish 

 from the stones among which they lie than arc those of an}- other species. 

 From the great majority of the plover tribe the present species differs 



in that its eggs are usually 

 three in number, although 

 there may be the normal 

 four. Usually they are laid 

 in a hollow in fine sand, 

 which ma\' be deep enough 

 to permit them to stand 

 almost U[)right ; but thej- 

 have been found on a heap 

 of seaweed cast up by the 

 tide. They measure rather 

 more than an inch in length, 

 are free from gloss, and 

 vary in ground-colour from 

 pale to dark buff; the 

 markings, which arc evcnl)- distributed, taking the form of specks, 

 spots, and scrawls of dark brown or black, with the usual pale purple 

 underlying marbling. 



Of the American kill-deer plover, yEgialids vocifera (referred by 

 some writers to a separate genus under the name of Oxyechus vociferus) 

 four examples were recorded as British up to the year 1904, namely, 

 one from Hampshire in 1859, a second from Peterhead in 1867, a 

 third from the Scilly Isles in 1885, ^"<^^ ^ fourth from Scotland in 

 1904. 



An even rarer straggler is the Caspian sand -plover, or eastern 

 dotterel, Aigialitis asiatica (also known as Eudrouiias asiaticus and 

 Ochthodroviiis asialicus), of which an example, now in the Norwich 

 Museum, was taken at Yarmouth, Norfolk, in May 1890. It differs 

 from the true ringed plovers by the absence of a white collar, and is 

 further distinguished by its slender beak, the dark shaft of the third 

 primary quill, and the white axillary plumes. 



THE ROWLAND W*RO STUDIOS 



CASPIAN SAND-IM.OVKK. 



