GRALLATORES. 235 



other species of the form, all or nearly all of which have black 

 bills and long legs, tind are less banded with black than the 

 members of the genus JEfjialites. They have a different note, 

 are very nimble of foot, and affect situations bordering the 

 open sea. 



Sp. 510. tEGIALOPHILUS RUFICAPILLUS. 



Red-capped Dottrel. 



Charadrius ruficapillus, Temm. PL Col., 47. fig. 2. 



marginatus, Geoff, in Mus. Paris. — Less. Traite d'Orn., p. 544. 



Hiaticula ruficapilla, G. R. Gray, List of Birds in Brit. Mus. Coll., 



part iii. p. 71. 

 Sand-Lark and Red-necked Plover, Colonists of Swan River. 



Hiaticula ruficapilla, Gould, Birds of Australia, fol., voL vi. pL 17. 



The Red-capped Dottrel is universally dispersed over every 

 part of the sea-shores of Australia that I have visited, and 

 everywhere evinces a greater preference for the shingly beach 

 of the ocean, and especially for deep salt-water bays, than for 

 the sides of rivers and inland waters ; it is very numerous in 

 Tasmania, on Flinders' Island, on the sand-banks at the 

 mouth of the Hunter in New South Wales and at Port Ade- 

 laide in South Australia ; and Gilbert states that it is equally 

 abundant in Western Australia, where it is likewise so strictly 

 a bird of the coast that he never saw it inland. It is usually 

 met with in pairs, but may be occasionally observed asso- 

 ciating in small companies. 



I found many of its eggs on Plinders' Island, deposited in 

 pairs in a slight depression of the sand among the shingle 

 just above high-water mark ; they were very difficult to 

 detect, in consequence of their colouring very closely assimi- 

 lating to that of the material among which they were placed ; 

 those procured by Gilbert in Western Australia were deposited 

 on a small mound of sand and sea- weed on the sandy beach at 

 a distance of from ten to twenty yards above high-water 



