CHARADRIDE. 323 
They make no nest, but the eggs are deposited on 
the ground, the hen bird merely scraping a small 
hole in the sandy dry ground chosen. 
The Great Plover is considered the largest of the 
British Plovers, nearly equalling the Curlew in size. 
The beak is black at the point, light greenish yellow 
at the base; irides bright golden yellow; from the 
beak to the eye, a streak under the eye and a patch 
over the eye, white; top of the head and back of the 
neck narrowly streaked very dark brown, almost 
black, and pale yellowish brown; there is a streak 
of the same colours from the base of the lower man- 
dible under the white streak above mentioned to the 
side of the neck; the feathers of the back, scapulars, 
tertials and upper tail-coverts dull brown, with a 
streak of very dark brown at the shafts; most of the 
feathers appear to have been margined with very 
pale yellowish or whitish brown, but the margins in 
my specimen are very much worn; the lesser wing- 
coverts are the same, except that one row of them is 
rather broadly marked with white, making a con- 
spicuous bar of that colour across the closed wing; 
the greater coverts have the same dark streak in the 
shafts of the feathers, but the rest is more of a dull 
smoky grey; the primary quills are almost black, 
the first and second have a white patch towards the 
end; the centre tail-feathers are dull smoky brown, 
the others are mottled with two shades of brown at 
the base, the middle is white and the ends black; 
