BRITISH BIRDS' NESTS. 333 



RUFF. 



(Machetes pugnax.) 

 Order LIMICOL^E ; Family SCOLOPACID^: (SNIPES). 



Description of Parent Birds. Length about 

 twelve and a half inches. Bill long, straight, 

 rather slender, and brown. Irides dusky brown. 

 The bird varies very considerably in plumage, one 

 eminent authority having examined two hundred 

 specimens and only found two alike. Yarrell says : 

 " The head, the whole of the ruff or tippet (long 

 plumes growing on the head and neck, and capable 

 of being raised so as to form a kind of shield), and 

 the shoulders of a shining purple-black, transversely 

 barred with chestnut ; scapulars, back, lesser wing- 

 coverts, and some of the tertials, pale chestnut, 

 speckled and tipped with black ; greater wing- 

 coverts nearly uniform ash-brown ; quill-feathers 

 brownish-black, with white shafts ; rump and upper 

 tail-coverts white ; tail feathers ash-brown, varied 

 with chestnut and black ; the feathers of the breast, 

 below the ruff and on the sides, chestnut, tipped 

 with black ; belly, vent, and under tail-coverts 

 white, with an occasional spot of dark brown ; legs 

 and toes pale yellow-brown ; claws black." 



The female or Reeve is about two inches less 

 in length, lacks the ruff or tippet altogether, and 

 although not differing much in other plumage, is 

 said to be more uniform in colour as a sex. 



Situation and Locality. In a tuft or tussock of 

 some kind of coarse vegetation growing in some 

 wet, swampy place. The bird used to breed at 

 several places in England, but the reclamation of 

 land, the requirements of gourmands, and, later, the 



