OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 85 



PLOVER, GOLDEN. 



ELEVATION seems to make no difference to the 

 breeding requirements of the Golden Plover, so 

 long as wild boggy heath or rough moorland is 

 present. I have met it breeding close by the 

 sea, and on mountain-tops between two and three 

 thousand feet in height. Although common enough 

 in nearly all suitable districts throughout the United 

 Kingdom, I have within recent years noticed a 

 considerable decrease in its numbers throughout 

 some old breeding-haunts both in England and 

 Scotland. Whilst in the Shetlands in 1898, we 

 met with a few pairs, but considering the suitable 

 nature of some of the ground we were on, they 

 could not be called anything but scarce. 



As a rule, the Golden Plover does not make 

 much of a nest. Sometimes its eggs are almost 

 standing on their sharp ends in a cup-shaped hole 

 amongst closely-cropped heather, with very little 

 in the way of a lining, and at others lying in 

 a slight hollow amongst rough bent grass and 

 coarse moss, and lined with bits of dead herbage 

 picked up close by. 



The larger size, and buff instead of olive ground 

 colour of the eggs, and the character of the country 

 upon which they are laid, as well as the usual 

 presence of the birds, easily distinguish them from 

 those of the Green Plover. 



The photograph from which our illustration has 

 been reproduced was taken on the Westmoreland 

 hills, close to Nine Standards, where the bird has 

 decreased, from some cause or other, during the 

 last fifteen years, to a considerable extent. My 

 brother and I only found two nests during a whole 

 day's search in the spring of 1897, although we 

 discovered a good number of Dunlins' nests. 



