106 GRALLJS. 



is a bird of the cold and arid heights, and never nestles on 

 the close margin of a lake or stream, or in any place among 

 aquatic plants. Absolute elevation is not so much a matter 

 of importance with them, as that peculiar description of 

 moorland soil on which, though there are pools and marshes 

 interspersed, the intermediate places are dry, and clothed 

 with so scanty an herbage that the bird can run about with 

 its feet on the ground. Cold ridges, where there is a settle- 

 ment for pools and a slope both ways, but not an abrupt one in 

 either, are the favourite haunts of this plover, neither in 

 the region of heath nor in that of the mountain grasses, but 

 about the natural ground, which is equally covered by both, 

 though fully covered by neither. I am not certain that they 

 extend so far up the hill in the veiy wild parts of the 

 country as the lapwings ; but when the two are found in the 

 same locality, the plover is generally farther up the height, or 

 at all events upon drier ground ground farther from the 

 pool or the marsh. 



They generally arrive on the breeding ground towards the 

 end of March, or early in April ; and though as they are 

 generally in open places of some extent, there are usually a 

 number of them in the same locality, they do not come in 

 flocks, or even so many together as the lapwings. Soon after 

 they arrive, the whistle of the male begins to be heard at 

 very early dawn : and, unless there are groves in the neigh- 

 bourhood, it is the matin call on the moor. It is shrill, and 

 by no means unpleasant; and as it begins before there is 

 much vegetable action, it is a sound of promise and of hope. 

 The female makes no nest, but merely scratches and levels 

 the surface a little, sometimes on a spot entirely bare, and 

 sometimes in a ragged and open heather, but never in what 

 can be called either cover or concealment. Indeed, the eggs 

 (for there is no nest) are always in that spot where a person 

 accustomed to look for nests in the lower and richer grounds, 



