TWO KINDS OF PLOVER l6l 



of water catching the light as it was blown against a 

 stone. In this case the stone was the bird's head, 

 while its body was to all intents and purposes another 

 stone of larger size. As long as the bird kept still I 

 should not have found out the deception, but directly 

 it moved I wondered how I could have been mistaken. 



On the shore of Mossel Bay, which is nearly a 

 hundred miles from Knysna, there is no beach, but 

 taking the place of beach are great quantities of finely 

 broken shells, giving the shore a pearly appearance. 

 The White Sand- Plovers frequent this bit of coast, as 

 they do every suitable stretch of coast around South 

 Africa, and they make their nests here, placing them a 

 little way up the sand banks and lining them with 

 small pieces of broken shells. Thus they rather draw 

 attention to the nests than otherwise, for they are easily 

 discovered when placed in this way on the white sand, 

 where there are but few other objects to distract the 

 eye. 



Where the shore is suited to their requirements 

 these birds are very numerous, but at Knysna there 

 was little of such ground. On the island called 

 Steinbok Island, near the mouth of the river, we found 

 these Plovers, and also on one or two strips of white 

 sand that there happened to be on the shore of the 

 estuary. This ground, however, had great advantages 

 from the point of view of the birds themselves, inas- 

 much as it was thickly dotted over with stones, and for 

 this reason the eggs were very difficult to find. Again 

 and again I marked one of these birds on a strip of 

 shore at Knysna, but was unable to discover any eggs, 

 until at last I went down on my knees at the exact 



ii 



