110 MUTTON BIRDS 



scour, whatever wind may blow, can never 

 accumulate in gathered force. 



When we had exposed a couple of plates and 

 McLean was gone, spying from a distant flax 

 bush I saw the hen return to the nest and 

 watched her scrape out the gathered sand, 

 ejecting it with her feet in little jets and puffs. 

 She had just settled down when the male, who 

 had been escorting the camera bearer off his 

 territory, spotted me lying in the flax. 



Instantly the hen was notified of danger, her 

 mate's piping driving her from the nest, and at 

 each repetition causing her to run faster and 

 faster, till I lost her at last in the flying sand 

 and the dip of the grey plain. After some time, 

 and when all was again considered to be safe, 

 she returned on the wing to within sixty or 

 eighty yards of the nest, and then ran in, 

 Dotterel fashion, with many a pause and many 

 a hiccoughing jerk of the head. 



The eggs in this nest were, unfortunately, 

 addled a fact which I knew the birds might at 

 any time discover, and which made it quite 

 improbable they would sit well to the camera. 



I considered myself, therefore, most fortunate 

 in the discovery of another nest high on the 

 shoulder of the granite hill. This nest was on 

 a ridge immediately above a precipitous rock- 

 fall, and where, therefore, no weight of sand 

 drift could gather to inconvenience the sitting 

 bird. Even here, however, so fierce was the gale 

 and so heavy the overblow of sand whirled up 

 the cliffs that the egg-pit had, after each short 

 abandonment, to be scraped out anew. 



The nest contained three eggs and lay some- 

 what behind I can hardly say, was sheltered 



