CHARADRIIFORMES CHAP. 
bo 
bo 
cocks are certainly somewhat crepuscular, and the drumming of 
the Snipe (p. 291) must be mentioned in passing. Nearly all Limi- 
eoline birds are migrants, and may frequently be heard overhead 
at night, when on passage. The flesh is generally excellent. 
Fam. I. Charadriidae.—Sub-fam. 1. Charadriinae.—The 
Dotterel (Zudromias morinellus), breeds on the fells and tundras of 
Northern Europe and Asia, as well as on the mountains of Scotland, 
Transylvania, Styria, and Bohemia—if not still in the English Lake 
District ; in winter it migrates to Palestine and North Africa. The 
colour is ashy-brown, with black crown and nape, towards the latter 
of which the white supercihary streaks run down; the throat is 
whitish, the fore-neck brown, divided by a white gorget from the 
orange-chestnut lower breast; the abdomen is black, the lateral 
rectrices are tipped with white. The young are more rufous above, 
and grey and white below. Three olive eggs with brown blotches 
are laid in a depression of the mossy ground, the parents being 
tamer than most Plovers at the nest. #. veredus inhabits Mongolia, 
wintering in the Sunda Islands, the Moluccas, and Australia; £. 
australis is confined to the last country ; &. (Zonibyx) modestus, the 
only four-toed species of the genus, ranges from Tarapaca and Buenos 
Aires'to Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands. Charadrius 
pluvialis, the Golden Plover, breeds on the higher British moorlands, 
and reaches from Northern Europe to the Lena in Asia, overlapping 
about the Yenisei C. fulvus, with grey instead of white axillaries, 
which extends to Bering Sea and—as the stouter, shorter-toed 
race C. dominicus—to Greenland. Both the latter have occurred 
in England. The plumage is black, densely spotted with yellow 
above, the forehead and superciliary streaks are white, as are the 
sides of the body. In winter the under parts are nearly white. 
At that season the various species migrate southwards as far as 
Cape Colony, India, Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia, and Chil... 
The loud clear whistle of the Golden Plover is a characteristic 
sound in summer on our sub-alpine hills, where the bird deposits 
four rich olive-brown eggs in a hollow in the herbage; it is very 
wary at the nest. The Grey Plover, Squatarola helvetica, with a 
distinct hind toe and black axillaries, is browner than the fore- 
going three-toed species in summer, and greyer in winter; it 
visits us from autumn to spring, but breeds in the far north of 
Eastern Europe, Asia, and America, reaching Cape Colony, Ceylon, 
and Tasmania on migration. Erythrogonys cinctus of Australia, and 
