Their Eggs and Nests. 165 



Plover in its winter visits to districts in which it does 

 not breed. The eggs are said to be in colour " oil green, 

 spotted with different shades of umber brown, the 

 spots crowded and confluent round the obtuse end." 



LAPWING — ( Vanellus vulgaris ; formerly, 

 V. cristatus). 



Pewit or Peewit, Te-wit, Teu-fit, Green Plover, 

 Bastard Plover, Green Lapwing, Crested Lapwing. — 

 Another of those birds which are familiar to almost 

 everyone who is not a mere casual visitor to the 

 country, or quite deaf and blind to its commonest 

 sounds and sights. It is a very universally diffused 

 bird, even in those districts where it does not statedly 

 breed. It nests not only on commons and heaths and 

 the wide moor, but in the fields and inclosures ; and 

 round my present residence I have many yearly evi- 

 dences that there are half-a-dozen nests within the 

 limits of a short half-mile which intervenes between 

 me and the moors. The female constructs scarcely 

 any nest, properly so called, but makes, or more likely 

 avails herself of a ready-made, slight cavity on the 

 surface of the ground, with a sufficiency of some kind 

 of herbao^e to serve as covert. The female's habits in 

 connection with the nest and eggs are different from 

 the male's. She slips off on the approach of a visitor, 

 and runs very silently and quietly away to some dis- 

 tance before taking wing ; he hastens up on rapid, 

 soundinor, whirlino: wincr and cries and dashes and 

 wheels above and around the cause of alarm in a very 

 remarkable manner. The Peewit lays four eggs, of 

 large size and acutely pointed at the lesser end, and 



