108 MUTTON BIRDS 



later of a second nest, I am convinced we could 

 not have missed the deep brown eggs lying on 

 grey sand. 



Perhaps this pair of Dotterel intended to 

 breed somewhere about that spot, and the 

 crouching furtive run and other lures practised 

 were not in use for any particular object, but 

 merely an overflow of functional activity. 



Terns, I have noticed flying with little fish in 

 their bills before the hens were actually nesting. 

 Delight in the exercise of the awakening 

 function, causes the male of both the Pied and 

 Yellow-breasted Tit to feed the hen before she 

 sits and, I believe, long before the nest is even 

 begun. Kittiwakes are happy in screaming at 

 an intruder, venturing near the future nesting 

 site of the colony; they have a prescience of 

 what is about to happen, just as a ewe about to 

 lamb begins to bleat, and search for the lamb not 

 yet actually arrived on the scene. 



I have also seen different birds, on different 

 occasions, with a straw or a feather or a stick 

 carried, not seriously or for a planned nest, but 

 at the dictate of that mysterious joy felt in 

 awakening spring and instinctively obeyed. I 

 think the preliminary or 'sham' nests that many 

 species build may also be thus accounted for. 

 These actions are as the flirtations that come 

 before love. 



Thus far the spots most closely searched had 

 been where Banded Dotterel or Stilt would 

 have chosen to lay, that is, on slightly raised 

 terraces of broken stone, irregularly yet 

 firmly embedded, and raised above the surface 

 but an inch or two, and where therefore no 

 weight of sand could lodge. We had also care- 



