THE GREY PLOVER. 8l 



Fam ily CHARADRIIDsE. 



GREY PLOVER. 



St/nafarola helvetica, LINN. 



'TpHE "Swiss" Plover (which of course is the meaning of "helvetica'' though 

 the English version is never used), owes any distinction which may fall to 

 it from this title, to the accidental circumstance that the specimens first described 

 were found in Switzerland by Reaumur. It is a bird of very wide range, and 

 much better known than its actual numbers in existence warrant. For on our 

 coasts, where it is everywhere a feature in its season, I do not think that I ever 

 saw a flock of much more than twenty individuals ; while in its not extensive 

 breeding quarters, though it is a good deal in evidence, the nests are probably a 

 mile apart, or more, on an average. It breeds (as far as is known at present) in 

 a comparatively small section of the extreme north, from the island of Kolguiev 

 and the mouth of the Petchora (and possibly Novaya Zemlya, but we did not meet 

 with it there in 1895), to the Taimyr Peninsula. But its summer range certainly 

 extends to Kamtschatka. Its winter quarters comprise the greater part of the 

 coasts of Asia, Africa (including Madagascar, etc.), Indo-Malaya, Australia, and 

 Tasmania. It is rare in Greenland, but probably breeds in small numbers along 

 the Arctic coasts of America, passing down the coasts in autumn and up in spring ; 

 it has not uncommonly been recorded from the West Indies on migration, and 

 has occurred as far south as Guatemala. Its numbers in the New World, however, 

 must be much less than in the Old, as it seems to be noticed so much less in 

 American books. It does not visit Iceland, but is found in Scandinavia on 

 migration, and is supposed to breed in the north of Norway, though direct evidence 

 is so far wanting. 



Colour of adult male : bill black, as long as the head, stouter than that of 

 the Golden Plover ; irides umber brown ; forehead white, continued into a white 

 eye-brow ; crown, shoulders, and upper parts generally, black, each feather with a 

 white tip and a brown-grey base, which gives the plumage of the upper parts a 

 singularly handsome mottled appearance ; on the shoulders the black becomes 

 browner ; wing-quills black, with white middles to the shafts and a white patch 

 on the inner web (the dark does not shade into grey, as in the Golden Plover, but 



