CHARADRIID^. 



525 



THE LITTLE RINGED PLOVER. 

 .E'gialitis cur<')Nica (J. F. (Imclin). 



The true Little Ringed Plover is one of the rarest of our occa- 

 sional visitors, and the genuine instances of its occurrence appear to 

 be the following : — Years ago Doubleday obtained an example at 

 Shoreham in Sussex, and Mr. \V. Borrer has another, shot near the 

 mouth of Chichester Harbour, in May ; Rodd's collection contains 

 one killed on October 23rd 1863, at Trescoe in the Scilly Islands; 

 while on Kingsbury Reservoir in Middlesex, in August 1864, Mr. 

 Harting and Mr. R. H. Mitford each obtained an immature bird. 

 Others have been recorded from time to time in ' The Zoologist ' 

 and elsewhere, but all those which have been submitted to com- 

 petent authorities have proved to be specimens of the small Con- 

 tinental form of the Ringed Plover, and some, indeed, are now 

 candidly admitted by their possessors to belong to that species. 

 The distinctions between the two are mentioned at the end of 

 this article. 



It is somewhat remarkable that the Little Ringed I'lover should 

 so seldom visit us, inasmuch as the bird has been recorded from 

 the Freroes, and is said by Mr. B. Grondal to be a wanderer to 

 Iceland, while, according to Bogdanow, it occurs sparingly as far 

 north as 64-66° N. lat. in Russia and Asiatic Siberia. It owes its 

 specific name to its occurrence in Courland, and it breeds abun- 



