578 SCOLOPACID.E, 



cauglit singly, being enticed by the stuffed birds. These 

 stuffed skins are sometimes so managed as to be moveable 

 by means of a long string, so that a jerk represents a jump, 

 a motion very common among Ruffs, who at the sight of a 

 wanderer flying by, will leap, or flit a yard off the ground, 

 by that means inducing those on wing to come and alight 

 by him."''' 



"When the Reeves begin to lay, both those and the Ruffs 

 are least shy, and so easily caught, that a fowler assured us 

 he could, with certainty, take every bird in the fen in the 

 season. The females continue this boldness, and their te- 

 merity increases as they become broody ; on the contrary, Ave 

 found the males at that time could not be approached within 

 the distance of gun-shot. The females, the Reeves, begin 

 laying their eggs the first or second week in May ; and we 

 have found their nest with young as early as the third of 

 June. By this time the males cease to go to kill. The 

 nest is usually formed upon a tump in the moist swampy 

 places, surrounded by coarse grass, of which it is also formed. 

 The eggs are four in number, of an olive colour, blotched 

 and spotted with clove and liver brown : one inch seven lines 

 in length, by one inch one line and a half in breadth. The 

 young, while covered with down, are prettily spotted, soon 

 leave their nest, and are difficult to find without a good dog. 

 The autumnal catching is usually about Michaelmas, at which 

 time few old males are taken, from which an opinion has been 

 formed, that they migrate before the females and young. It 

 is, however, more probable that the few which are left after 

 the spring fowling, like other polygamous birds, keep in par- 

 ties separate from the female and her brood till the return 

 of spring." Montagu took the trouble of trans^^orting several 

 of these birds, both males and females, with him from Lin- 

 colnshire into Devonshire, some of them lived three years in 

 captivity, and one of them four years : the changes they 



