228 CEDICNEMIDiE. 



mentions their partiality for new plantations made in the 

 open country, on the improved plan of double-trenching the 

 soil. The loosened ground affords better means of obtaining 

 worms and beetles, and the birds appear particularly to 

 delight in the partial concealment which the young trees 

 afford in the first year or two. When the trees attain any 

 size the attraction generally ceases, but Professor Newton 

 states that a pair of birds resorted to a spot in the warren- 

 covert at Elveden, which extends over more than three 

 hundred acres, long after it had become the centre of a 

 flourishing wood.* The eggs, generally two in number, are 

 deposited on the bare ground ; they are pale clay-brown, 

 blotched, spotted, and streaked with ash-blue and dark 

 brown; measuring about 2*1 by 1*5 in. So closely do these 

 eggs, and also the chicks in their downy covering, assimilate 

 in colour with the soil and the stones around them, that 

 they are both very difficult to find. Eggs have been observed 

 as late as September. 



The large and prominent eye in this species indicates a 

 bird that moves and feeds by twilight or later. Their food 

 is worms, slugs, and insects ; they also devour small 

 mammals, and especially field-mice and reptiles. The late 

 Mr. Newcome told Mr. Stevenson that the warreners found 

 frogs which had been disgorged by the Stone- Curlews when 

 caught in traps. Mr. Selby and the Rev. L. Jenyns found 

 the remains of large coleopterous insects, of the genus 

 Carahus, in the stomach of this species ; and these beetles, 

 it will be recollected, do not begin to move about till the 

 close of day. Its cry is loud and clear, and on moonlight 

 nights especially it is frequent. 



Denmark, to which it is a rare straggler, appears to be 

 the northern limit of the Stone-Curlew, but throughout 

 the greater part of the European Continent it is generally 

 distributed where the conditions of existence are favourable, 

 and in the south it is to a great extent a resident through- 

 out the year, on both sides, and in many of the islands of 

 the Mediterranean. In the Canaries also it has been found 



* Stevenson, ' Birds of Norfolk,' ii. p. 55. 



