AVOCET. 135 
ground among shingle or collections of small pebbles.—Fig. 5, 
plate VIII. 
196. SPOTTED SAND-PIPER—(Totanus macularius). 
A visitor, but one of the rarest and most casual of all our 
feathered visitors. 
197. GREEN-SHANK—(Zotanus glottis). 
Cinerous Godwit, Green-legged Horseman.—I used to meet 
with it occasionally in the early autumn on the Essex Saltings, 
and remember thinking I had got a prize the first time I shot 
one, and noticed its slightly upturned bill. It is only rare as a 
species, and not known positively to breed any where much south 
of the Hebrides. The nest is said to be like that of the Golden 
Plover or Lapwing, consisting only of a few blades of grass or 
sprigs of ling, placed in a hollow in the soil. The eggs—like so 
very many of those characterised by the pyriform shape peculiar 
to the Grallatores—are placed with their pointed ends together 
in the middle, and are of a pale yellowish-green colour, spotted 
all over irregularly with dark brown with intermingled blotches 
of light purplish-grey ; the spots and blotches being more nume- 
rous at the larger end. 
198. AVOCET—(Recurvirostra avocetta). 
Butterflip, Scooper, Yelper, Cobbler’s Awl, Crooked-bill, Cob- 
bler’s-Awl Duck.—Fast verging on extinction. In Sir Thomas 
Browne’s time it was not at all uncommon; but of late years 
but seldom recorded as having been “ obtained,” or met with. 
If only people weren’t so fond of “obtaining” our rare birds. 
But now-a-days, when every third person has a gun, the appear- 
ance of a “rare bird” is enough to set half a village off in 
pursuit, and the great object of hundreds throughout the country 
seems just to be to destroy the casual feathered visitor, however 
interesting it may be or whatever claims it might seem to possess 
