RAMBLE XI. 

 BY SANDY SHORES. 



STILL keeping to the coasts, we will now confine 

 our attention to a ramble across the sands and the 

 shingly beaches. Here, according to season, vast 

 numbers of birds may be met with, and here 

 during the summer months a few very interesting 

 birds have their homes. We will also visit a few 

 of the grassy downs, those beautiful expanses of 

 smooth, short turf of brightest green above the 

 sea, where other and shyer fowl come to rear their 

 young with each returning spring. 



Summer and winter alike, the long, broad 

 stretches of sandy beach that occur on most parts 

 of the coast which have any foreshore at all, are 

 the home of the RINGED PLOVER (sEgialitis widely 

 hiatMild). This bird is easily recognised as it distributed - 

 runs across the sands, often close to the receding 

 waves, by its broad white collar, white forehead 

 and throat, black breast and cheeks, brown upper 

 parts and pure white underparts below the breast. 

 In autumn and winter it is not unfrequently found 

 where the shore is muddy, and even some con- 

 siderable distance from the sea up a tidal river 

 or near a large sheet of water ; but in summer 



