54 BRITISH BIRDS. 



obtruding themselves impertinently between us and the objects of our 

 attention. This pair of Grey Plovers also puzzled us, and we concluded 

 that they possibly had young, and consequently we gave up the search. 

 We had each marked a place where we thought the nest might be; and 

 each of us went to satisfy ourselves that it was not there. The two 

 places were about fifty yards apart. The birds first went up to Harvie- 

 Brown and tried to attract him away by flying about and feigning 

 lameness; then they came to me and did the same. They were so 

 demonstrative that I felt perfectly certain of finding the nest, and shot at 

 the female. She dropped in the middle of a wet bog. I then shot the male, 

 walked up to him, and left him with my basket and gun whilst I struggled 

 through the bog to pick up the female. Before I got up to her, I saw her 

 lying on the turf on her breast with her wings slightly expanded, I was just 

 preparing to pick her up, when she rose and flew away, apparently unhurt. 

 I must have missed her altogether, as she was evidently only shamming to 

 draw me away. I returned to search for the nest, and was unable to find 

 it. Whilst I was looking for it Harvie-Brown came up, and I gave up 

 the search, and we again turned towards the boat. When we had got 

 about halfway towards the spot where Harvie-Brown had been looking, I 

 caught sight of a young Grey Plover in down, almost at my feet. 

 Stooping down to pick it up, I saw the nest with three eggs not a yard 

 from me. This was the last and eleventh nest of these rare birds which 

 we found. The young in down are very yellow, speckled with black, and 

 are admirably adapted for concealment upon the yellow-green moss on the 

 edges of the little bogs close to which the Grey Plover seems always to 

 choose a place for its nest. 



Our attempt to hatch the highly incubated eggs, and thus obtain 

 specimens of young in down, was successful. We soon had five young 

 Grey Plovers well and hearty, and saved three or four more afterwards. 

 We subsequently spent a week at Dvoinik, a hundred miles lower 

 down the Petchora, on the shores of the lagoon. Here we found the 

 Grey Plover even more abundant than on the tundra opposite Alexievka. 

 It frequented exactly the same description of ground. Our interpreter 

 shot a Grey Plover from the nest, and brought us four young in down 

 from it, evidently just hatched. This was on the 22nd of July ; and two 

 days later I caught a young Grey Plover in down, somewhat older and 

 greyer in colour. 



The eggs of the Grey Plover are four in number, intermediate in colour 

 between those of the Golden Plover and the Lapwing, and subject to 

 variation, some being much browner, and others more olive, none quite 

 as olive as typical Lapwing's eggs or as buff as typical ones of the Golden 

 Plover, but the blotching is in every respect the same; the underlying 

 spots are equally indistinct, the surface-spots are generally large, especially 



