RINGED PLOVER. 91 
(Tringa variabilis), and even during the intense frost, 
which lasted for several days in January, 1862, I ob- 
served several ringed plover on Breydon, when the half 
starved dunlins were being slaughtered by hundreds. 
About the middle of February, in mild seasons, but 
more ordinarily at the beginning of March, these birds 
again make their appearance on Breydon in large 
flocks, though at that time, as Mr. Frere states, they 
are always extremely shy; and it is just at this 
early period of the spring that their melodious whistle 
is once more heard on the warrens, and they are found 
“taking to” the beach by the Salthouse gunners. Occa- 
sionally, also, their “overland route” is marked at that 
period by the appearance of stragglers on the banks of 
our rivers, far from their usual haunts, as on the 23rd 
of March, 1862, when a single bird was shot in a meadow, 
at Heigham, near Norwich. Some weeks later, how- 
ever, usually about the first or second week in May, 
a second flight make their appearance on Breydon, 
arriving at the same time with the knots, godwits, and 
grey plover, which are then hurrying northwards to 
their distant breeding grounds, and that a portion of 
these, never very numerous, should remain on our shores, 
attracted by the presence of their own kindred, is not 
only, I think, a plausible theory, but one which would 
account for the late period at which their eggs may be 
met with, quite apart from any casualties or even second 
broods. 
has remarked that in such quantities they keep entirely separate 
from the dunlins or any other species. He has also noticed that 
“ringed plover are often seen in localities where the beach is not 
sufficiently muddy to attract stints, and that when the tide is falling 
both the ringed plover and sanderlings begin to feed at an earlier 
period of the ebb than the stints, and remain nearer the shingle, 
generally not going down so close to the ebbing waves as the 
stints do.” ; 
N 2 
