By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 53 



and breeds on our downs ; but assembling in large flocks as autumn 

 approaches, it retires to the sea-coast in November, and returns 

 again at the end of February or beginning of March : and I have 

 long been accustomed to watch for its arival as the first harbinger 

 of spring in my upland home. Its eggs are very highly esteemed 

 in the London market, and though doubtless the majority of 

 veritable Plover's eggs, as the dealers declare, are the produce of 

 the Black-headed Gull, the Peewit's nest is still the object of dili- 

 gent search : fortunately, however, it is so diflBcult to find in the 

 extensive corn-fields or wide-spreading expanse of turf; and the 

 parent birds are so cunning in their artifices to entice away the 

 intruder, that it is not very often found' in this county at least, 

 where the search for its eggs has happily not become a regular 

 trade. The bird and its habits are so well known that I need not 

 further describe them. 



"Oyster-catcher." {HcBmatopus ostralegus.) This robust power- 

 ful species is a true salt-water bird, and seems to have no place in 

 our inland county : but an account of its capture at Bradford on 

 Avon in September, 1869, as recorded in a newspaper at the time, 

 permits me to include it in our Wiltshire catalogue : though how 

 it came to follow the river so far from its regular haunts on the 

 sea-shore, and what it found to subsist on during its journey, I am 

 at a loss to conjecture. Its plumage is striking, from the pleasing 

 contrast of black and white which it displays : and its bright 

 orange-red bill, of a peculiar wedge-shaped form, to enable it to 

 wrench open the shell-fish which constitutes its food, and its 

 vermilion legs give it a handsome appearance. It is a very com- 

 mon bird in those localities on the coast which abound in the 

 molluscs on which it feeds. 



GRUID^ (The Cranes). 



The magnificent birds which comprise this family may be said 

 to occupy the position among the Waders, which the Bustards 

 enjoy among the Ground-birds. Of great size, tall and erect, they 

 are a stately race, and stalk among their fellows with elegant and 

 lordly mien : the few species known in Europe are all migratory ; 



