126 SKLTISH BIKDS, THELK EGGS AND NESTS. 
onour hospitality. The Avocet’s bill and plumage are enough to 
point it out for slaughter, and so, slaughtered it has beer. 
It used to breed in Sussex and Norfolk. “The nest is said to 
be a small hole in the drier parts of extensive marshes. The 
eges ate said to be only two in number, of a clay-coloured 
brown, spotted and speckled with black.” 
199. BLACK-WINGED STILT—(Himantopus melanopterus). 
Long-legged Plover, Long-Legs, Long-Shanks, Stilt Plover.— 
Not so very uncommon as a visitor ; but still, strictly speaking, 
only accidental in its appearance here. 
200. BLACK-TATLED GODWIT—(Limosa melanura). 
Red-Godwit Snipe, Jadreka Snipe, Red Godwit, Yarwhelp, 
Yarwhip, Shrieker.—Another of those birds which two or three 
generations back were exceedingly more abundant than now: 
proportionately esteemed, too, as an article of delicate fare in the 
days of its frequency, now little heard of, or perhaps thought of. 
But our forefathers thought many. things of the eatable sort 
good, which their descendants of 1861 had rather not sit down 
to. I rather think my young readers might not eat Porpoise or 
Heron either, with any great relish, not to speak of other matters 
about equally, or more questionably, “ good eating.” Both this 
species of Godwit and the one to be mentioned next are subject, 
like the Golden Plover, the Gray Plover, the Spotted Redshank, 
and many others yet to be named, to very great and striking 
changes of plumage in the breeding season. At all times they 
are handsome birds. The Black-Tailed Godwit is believed still to 
breed, however rarely, in England—in Norfolk and Cambridge- 
shire, in fact. The nest is found in marshy places, made of dry 
grass and the like, and more or less concealed by the coarse 
growths peculiar to such places. The eggs vary in both size and 
colours, but are usually of a greenish olive-brown, marbled and 
