392 OYSTERCATCHER AND TURNSTONE 



not been recorded. The eggs are normally four in number, sometimes only 

 three. They are fairly characteristic, the ground-colour ranging from greenish to 

 brownish or olivaceous, but usually with a tinge of greenish, and rather pointed in 

 shape, freely spotted and blotched with dark brown and underlying shellmarks 

 of ashy grey. Average size of 75 eggs, 1'58 x 1*15 in. [40'3 x 29*1 mm.]. No reliable 

 observations seem to have been made on the length of the incubation period, 

 but Manniche asserts that both sexes take part in the work and show brooding 

 spots. Pearson states that it is always the male bird which takes the leading part 

 in protecting both eggs and young, while the female keeps carefully out of danger ; 

 but this is not the view of Manniche, who states that the cock assists in guarding 

 the chicks only when they are very young (see p. 408). In the S. Baltic eggs may 

 be found in the first half of June, but on the shores of the Arctic Ocean not as a rule 

 before the middle of that month, and occasionally as late as the first week in July. 

 In Grinnell Land Hart obtained eggs on July 30. One brood is reared in the season. 

 [F. c. E. J.] 



5. Food. Small crustaceans, such as tiny crabs, shrimps, and sand-hoppers, 

 molluscs, insects such as the flies that breed in decaying seaweed and their larvae. 

 Also fragments of plants (Manniche, N.E. Greenland, p. 129). The results of various 

 stomach analyses are as follows : mussels swallowed entire 5x3 mm., crabs 5x5 

 mm., also other bivalves, univalves, and shrimps (Patten, Aquatic Birds, p. 245). 

 Small beetles, the young of Littorince, small crustaceans (R. Collett, quoted by 

 Dresser, Birds of Europe, vii. p. 564). Full-grown young feed chiefly on sand- 

 hoppers, the downy chicks on larvae of Chironomidce and other indeterminable larvse 

 of insects (Manniche, Terrestrial Mammals and Birds of N.E. Greenland, p. 129). 

 They are attended and assisted by both parents in their search for food. Although 

 apparently one parent bears the greater share of this duty, it is not clear which, 

 as authorities differ, [w. P.] 



