PLOVERS. 475 



It generally runs a little distance before taking wing, and seldom seems to fly 

 very high. If a flock be observed, they are usually seen scattered up and down 

 the sandy tract, not feeding close together. When danger threatens, each looks 

 out for itself, taking refuge in the nearest available cover, or crouching flat down 

 on the sand." The food of this bird consists of insects and their larvse, more 

 especially the swarms of grasshoppers frequenting its haunts. It is reported to 

 generally lay its two or three eggs in a hollow of the ground, which may be 

 a natural one or excavated by the bird itself; but in the Punjab it may nest 

 among stubble or beneath tussocks of grass. The eggs have an ochraceous buff 

 ground-colour, blotched and speckled with buffish brown, and marbled with greyish 

 veinings which appear to underlie the darker colours. 



Black-Backed This species (Pluvianus cegyptius) differs, as we have seen, in 



courser. the character of the nasal region of the skull from its allies, and is on 

 this account referred to a distinct genus. Externally, it may be recognised at a 

 glance by its uniformly black back and scapulars, the black also extending as 

 a band on each side of the breast, running forwards as a streak below the eye to 

 the beak, and crowning the summit of the head. It resembles Jerdon's courser 

 (C. bitorquatus) of India, in having white bands across some of the primary quills, 

 and also in the absence of serrations on the claw of the third toe ; while in the 

 relative shortness of the metatarsus it approaches Lichtenstein's courser 

 (C. senegalensis) of tropical Africa, in which the serrations of the claw of the 

 third toe may also be sometimes wanting. An accidental visitor to Spain, Algeria, 

 and Palestine, the black -backed courser inhabits the Nile Valley, from Cairo to 

 Khartum, and thence ranges across Central Africa to the Gabun and Angola. 



This courser, often termed the black-headed plover, is very common on the 

 banks of the Nile, where several pairs may often be seen on a single sandbank ; 

 and brings itself under notice by the loud chattering cry it utters every time it 

 takes wing. The most remarkable peculiarity in its habits is its custom of 

 burying its eggs in moist sand where they undergo incubation, the trait having 

 been verified by Captain Verner during the Sudan expedition. That gentleman 

 on two occasions had the good fortune to come across a clutch of three eggs thus 

 buried, in the second instance having seen the bird at work. A relative also 

 noticed that in another case one of the birds damped the sand round the eggs by 

 first wetting its breast at the water's edge, and then running to squat down for a 

 couple of minutes. The action of the sun on the damp sand gives rise to a 

 bleaching process in the eggs, which in their regularly oval contour resemble those 

 of the cream-coloured courser. 



THE PLOVER TRIBE. 

 Family CHARADRIID^. 



The rest of the more typical members of the order may be included in the 

 family Charadriidce, of which the essential feature is that the rostrum on the 

 base of the skull is furnished with basipterygoid processes. This family may be 

 subdivided into three subfamilies, of which the first is represented by the plovers, 



