188 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
sionally appéars, though only as a winter visitor. As 
such I am able to include it in my list, a single 
individual having been killed at South Clifton on the 
21st December, 1866. It is singular that birds of this 
species should occasionally wander so far from their 
haunts on the plains of Southern Russia, and at such 
a season. Rarely more than a solitary bird is seen at a 
time, and it receives but a poor welcome. 
Amongst the birds becoming scarcer every year is the 
Thick-knee (Zdienemus crepitans), or, as it is also 
called, the great plover or stone curlew. Though scarce 
enough to be an object of interest, it is yet by no means 
a rare species, and regularly frequents many parts of 
our bare sandy forest land which are suitable to its 
habits. It used to breed on a large rabbit warren at 
Oxton, but the greater part of this has now been in- 
closed, and the thick-knee has disappeared with the 
solitude. I have known it also occur on Walesby Breck, 
and on the sheepwalks in the neighbourhood of Inkersal 
it may frequently be seen and heard. I have noted 
their arrival as early as the 17th of March. Its habit 
of resting in the daytime and squatting under cover of 
stones or bushes renders it difficult to detect in places 
which it is known to visit. It feeds and migrates in the 
night; every summer I have heard its well-known loud 
shrill cry, as it flew over my head in the darkness, most 
frequently during the season of its arrival. 
The Golden Plover (Charadrius pluvialis) occurs in 
varying numbers, chiefly in early spring and summer. 
On the banks of the Trent it assembles in large flocks 
in winter, but in cur own immediate neighbourhood I 
never met with it at that season, with the exception of 
two that were killed on the farm of Leyfields on the 
