BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 53 



witnessed this incident many years ago, and told it 

 briefly in Argenting Ornithology^ but that work is 

 little known and unobtainable, and I am rather pleased 

 at the opportunity of relating it again more fully 

 in this place. 



The bird was a Vanellus, a lapwing in its shape, * 

 crest, and the colour of its plumage closely allied to 

 our familiar bird of the moors and pasture-lands, but 

 a third bigger, with pink beak, crimson eyes, scarlet 

 spurs on its wings, and bright red legs, and these 

 touches of colour, " angrie and brave," give it a 

 strikingly bold appearance. Our green plover is 

 like a small weak copy of the Argentine bird. The 

 voice of the latter, too, is twice as loud, and its temper 

 more jealous and violent. In its habits it resembles 

 the peewit, but has a greater love of play, which it 

 practises, both when flying and on the ground. This 

 play on the ground, called by the natives the bird's 

 " dance," is performed by a set of three, and is in- 

 dulged in every day at intervals all the year round. 

 So fond of it are they that when the birds are dis- 

 tributed in pairs all over the plains, for some time 

 before and during the breeding season, one bird may 

 frequently be seen to leave his mate at home and 

 fly away to visit another pair in the neighbourhood. 

 These, instead of rising up with angry screams to 

 hunt him furiously away from their sacred ground 

 as they would any other bird, receive his visit with 

 manifest pleasure, and running to him where he 

 stands motionless, they place themselves behind him, 



