GOLDEN AND GREY-PLOVERS 357 



a generic character, is no help in identification in the field, but the 

 difference in colour of the axillary plumes, which are black in the 

 grey and white in the golden-plover, forms a useful guide as to their 

 identity when flying. 



The golden is the more familiar bird. It breeds on many wild 

 moorlands in the western half and in the north of England, also in 

 Wales and Ireland, and throughout Scotland and its islands. In 

 winter it may be seen in large flocks on the seashore, the marshes, 

 moorlands, and cultivated fields. The grey-plover is but a bird of 

 passage in spring and autumn, and a fairly numerous winter visitor, 

 frequenting the sea-coast and adjoining marshes. Its nesting- 

 quarters lie in the far north. So far as is known, it does not breed 

 west of the island of Kolguev and the Petchora river. Here it nests 

 in fair numbers, and also by the Yenisei and on the tundras of 

 arctic Asia, especially on the Taimyr Peninsula. Its range is 

 continued across the barren lands north of the Arctic Circle, in 

 America, to Greenland, where, however, it appears to be rare. In 

 winter it does not wander so far south in the New World as in the Old ; 

 it has hardly been recorded below Brazil. In the Old World it ranges 

 from Africa to Australia. On migration it passes down Scandinavia 

 and Great Britain, and along various routes in the large river valleys 

 of Central Europe and Asia. 



Like all birds that nest in the far north, it is in no hurry to make 

 the spring passage, timing itself to arrive at its nesting grounds with 

 the breaking up of the long Arctic winter. The birds which have 

 passed the winter with us begin to work north towards the end of 

 April, but it is doubtful if any leave the country until the great north- 

 ward-bound flocks from southern wintering-places pass along our 

 coasts late in May, when the birds have already acquired their black 

 breasts, and their golden cousins have already hatched out many a 

 brood of downy chicks. I have seen immense flocks of grey-plover 

 resting and feeding on the steaming marismas of Southern Spain in 

 the third week of May. A few days before they were, may be, south 



