618 



THE PRATINCOLE. 



The eggs of this bird are laid upon the bare ground, and are two in number. Their color 

 is rather light dingy-brown, covered with splashes and streaks of slaty-blue and dark brown. 

 The male bird is supposed to aid in the duties of incubation. When hatched, the young birds 

 are covered with a soft spotty down, so like the stones and soil in which they repose, that they 

 can hardly be discovered even within a yard or two. For the same reason, the eggs are very 

 safe from unpractised eyes. About October, the birds take their departure, assembling 

 together in flocks before they start on their travels. 



The general color of the Thick-knee is mottled brown and black. The head is brown 

 streaked with black ; there is a light-colored stripe from the forehead to the ear-coverts, and 

 the chin and throat are white. The back is brown streaked with black, and the quill-feathers 

 of the wing are nearly black, with a few patches of white. The neck and breast are extremely 

 pale brown, streaked with a darker hue, and the abdomen is nearly white, with a few long and 

 very narrow longitudinal streaks. In total length the bird measures about seventeen inches. 



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PHATUJCOLB. Oianota pratincola. 



THE close compact plumage of the PRATINCOLE, its long pointed wings, its deeply forked 

 tail, and swallow-like form, point it out as a bird of swift wing and enduring flight. 



The Pratincole is a usual resident of the east of Europe and Central Asia. Like the swal- 

 lows, to which it is so similar in form and habits that even modern zoologists have doubted 

 whether it ought not to find a place among those birds rather than with the Waders, the 

 Pratincole feeds much upon the wing, snapping up the insects as they come across its path, 

 and especially delighting in picking the aquatic insects out of their native element without 

 even staying its aerial course. Its endurance is equal to its speed, and a flight of two or three 

 hundred miles is but an easy journey to this bird, which can thus pass over a very great 

 extent of country in a few days. 



The nest of the Pratincole is made among thick aquatic herbage, and the eggs are gener- 

 ally about five or six in number. The general color of the Pratincole is shining yellowish- 

 brown above. The chin is whitish, and the front of the throat reddish-white. A narrow black 

 rtreak runs from the eyes over the ear-coverts, and round the throat, forming the "collar," by 



