AMERICAN OYSTER-CATCHER. 55 



the Atlantic. They return to New Jersey by the close of 

 April, and frequenting the sandy sea-beach, are now seen in 

 small parties of two or three pairs together. They are gene- 

 rally wild and difficult to approach, except in the breeding- 

 season, and at times may be seen walking erectly and watch- 

 fully along the shore, now and then probing the sand in quest 

 of marine worms, moUusca, and minute shell-fish. Their larger 

 prey is sometimes the small burrowing crabs called fiddlers, 

 as well as mussels, solens, and oysters, their reputed prey 

 in Europe. They seldom, however, molest the larger shell- 

 fish in the United States, preferring smaller and less precarious 

 game. Catesby, at the same time, asserts that he found 

 oysters in the stomach, and Willoughby adds that they some- 

 times swallowed entire limpets. According to Belon, the organ 

 of digestion is indeed spacious and muscular, and the flesh 

 of the bird is black, hard, and rank flavored. Yet in the 

 opinion of some, the young, when fat, are considered as agree- 

 able food. The nests of the Oyster-catchers are said often to 

 be made in the herbage of the salt-marshes, but on the At- 

 lantic coast these birds commonly drop their eggs in slight 

 hollows scratched in the coarse sand and drift, in situations 

 just sufficiently elevated above the reach of the summer tides. 

 The eggs are laid from the first to the third week in May, 

 and from the 15 th to the 25 th the young are hatched, and 

 run about nimbly almost as soon as they escape from the shell. 

 At first they are covered with a down nearly the color of the 

 sand, but marked with a line of brownish black on the back, 

 rump, and neck. In some parts of Europe Oyster- catchers are 

 so remarkably gregarious in particular breeding-spots that a 

 bushel of their eggs in a few hours might be collected from 

 the same place. 



Like Gulls and other birds of this class, incubation costs 

 much less labor than among the smaller birds, for the female 

 sits on her eggs only during the night and morning, or in cold 

 and rainy weather ; the heat of the sun and sand alone being 

 generally sufficient to hatch them, without the aid of the bird 

 by day. The nest is, however, assiduously watched with the 



