Limicolce 193 



from Shetland to Derbyshire, in Wales and its border 

 counties, in Somerset, Devon, and Ireland; in autumn 

 it comes down to the low country and during winter is 

 common on many parts of the coasts, as well as on the 

 flat fields of East Anglia and other districts. The upper 

 parts are in summer black closely spotted with yellow, 

 the lower parts uniform black ; from autumn to spring 

 the latter are brownish white. The forehead and a line 

 running from above each eye to the flanks are always 

 white. From August till late spring many immigrants 

 from abroad are with us, the foreign range extending 

 over Arctic and northern Europe and Asia to the 

 Yenisei. A few pairs even breed in Switzerland. The 

 food consists of insects and their larvae, worms, and 

 the like, with small mollusks from the shore, and at 

 times a little vegetable matter ; the note, very charac- 

 teristic of our wilder moorlands, is a sharp continually 

 repeated whistle ; the flight, especially of the winter 

 flocks, is low, swift, and often circling ; the nest is 

 little more than a depression in the grass, heather, or 

 moss, and contains three or four yellowish buff eggs 

 with fine blackish blotches. 



The Grey Plover (Squatarola squatarola) can be 

 distinguished with certainty from the last species by 

 its black axillaries, as these feathers below the wing 

 are white in the Golden Plover ; the spotting, more- 

 over, is white rather than yellow, and there is a 

 distinct hind -toe. The Grey Plover only visits our 

 shores from autumn to spring, and very rarely occurs 

 inland ; wide stretches of sand and mud flats are its 

 ordinary haunts, while it is more common in the east 

 than in the west. Its summer range extends over 

 the Arctic portions of Russia, Asia, and America; the 



E. B. 13 



