

THE DOTTREL. 267 



colour, and the front, belly, and neck, white. The 

 female has the colours less bright than the male, and 

 even on him the black and green fade so much in the 

 winter, that he is called the green plover in one part of 

 the country, and the grey in another. The plover's nest is 

 a very simple structure two or three stalks of withered 

 grass or rushes, laid on a bare place of small extent, 

 and where the herbage partially conceals the dam, and 

 the eggs when she is absent, but still low enough for 

 her to see danger across it the moment that the male, 

 which always watches when she sleeps, sounds his 

 tocsin whistle. The eggs are generally four, of a pale 

 olive colour, mottled with dark olive brown spots, and 

 remarkable for the different thickness of the ends. 

 They form a beautiful quatrefoil when lying in the 

 nest, and we never came upon a nest containing eggs 

 in which the points of the four were not towards the 

 centre nearly in contact, the axis of each pair in a 

 straight line, and those of the two at right angles to 

 each other. 



The manoeuvres of the old birds render it by no 

 means so easy a matter as one would suppose from its 

 situation in the open heath, to get a sight of a plover's 

 nest ; and of one species of plover, the dottrel (cha- 

 radrius morinellus,) of which great numbers must 

 breed in the Scottish mountains, as they flock thither 

 during the greater part of April, and return during the 

 greater part of August, has seldom if ever been met 

 with. One shepherd, indeed, told us of a nest that he 

 had seen on the mount, or month that part of the Gram- 

 pians where the water " sheds" between the sources of 

 the Esks and the southern branches of the Dee, which 



