112 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS, 
blotched and spotted with two or three shades of brown, lighter 
and darker. 
160. LITTLE BUSTARD—(Otis tetraz). 
Only a casual, and not a summer visitor. 
TV.—GRALLATORES. 
FAMILY I—CHARADRITD A. 
161. CREAM-COLOURED COURSER—(Cursorius 
Isabellinus). 
A very rare bird indeed. 
162. GREAT PLOVER—(@dicnemus crepitans). 
Stone Curlew, Norfolk Plover, Whistling Plover, Stane 
Plover, Thick-knee.—The Stone Curlew is a summer visitor, and 
strictly a local one. The Nightingale, for instance, is very much 
more extensively diffused than the bird just named. It is found 
abundantly enough on the wide sandy plains of Norfolk, and I 
used to hear it very commonly in the fields a few miles to the 
north-west of Bury St. Edmunds. Besides the counties just 
named, it is met with in parts of Hssex and Kent, in Hampshire, 
and Cambridgeshire, and two or three others. Its peculiar shrill 
ery or whistle, once heard, is not likely to be forgotten. The 
female lays two eggs on the bare ground, among white-coated 
flints and stones. -An idea of their ground-colour may be given 
by the mention of what the painters call stone-colour, in pale 
shades, and this is streaked and spotted, or marbled, with dark 
brown.—fiig. 1, plate VII. 
162.* PRATINCOLE—(Glareola torquata). 
Collared Pratincole, Austrian Pratincole.—A bird of sufficiently 
rare occurrence in this country, and remarkable as having caused 
some degree of perplexity and dispute among naturalists as to 
the position it should occupy in the general system or classifica- 
