240 BIRD LIFE 



are met by a wonderful instance of the care of Nature 

 for her children a present mystery as great as any in 

 the past ; the protection afforded by imitative colour- 

 ing to the eggs when in their natural surroundings. 



' The heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.' 

 No one who has only seen dried egg shells in collections 

 can at all realise how perfect this protection often is. 



An enthusiastic collector not very long ago made a 

 trip to the north of Scotland with the object of taking 

 with his own hands the eggs of the Dotterel, which, 

 as he had learnt, was breeding on a mountain-side. 

 On reaching the spot the birds rose close by him, and, 

 from the way in which they behaved, he was satisfied 

 that eggs were not far off. But, with practised eyes, 

 he hunted in vain until, when on the point of giving 

 up the search as hopeless, he had put his foot upon 

 them and broken all. 



Coots' and Snipes' eggs are other instances of colour 

 adaptation to surroundings. Conspicuous as are the 

 flattened heaps of dry sedges, which are the usual nests 

 of the Coots, it is very difficult, unless quite close by, to 

 say whether or not they contain eggs. Not only is the 

 groundwork of the egg an exact match to the general 

 colour of the dry nest ; but the black spots with which 

 they are freely dotted are perfect reproductions of the 

 ' little pitted specks ' on the decaying sedge. 



The writer, when a few years ago exploring with a 

 friend a marsh by a Broad in Norfolk, was shown by a 

 keeper the exact spot ' five feet from yon bush in line 

 with yon ' where the day before he had put a Snipe off 



