176 GRALLJE. 



than tliose of the curlew. The chin, throat, and belly, are 

 white, without the brown lines which mark those parts of 

 v the curlew ; and the lower part of the back and the rump are 

 also white. The mottlings on the other parts are not so 

 minute, and the bill is more slender, as well as only half the 

 length. 



The bird is found on the same shores as the curlew in the 

 winter, and has nearly the same habits, only it is not quite 

 so shy, and not nearly so abundant. It migrates farther to 

 the north in the breeding season, and rears its young in 

 places which are still wilder and more retired. Like the 

 other, it spends but little of its time in nest building. Its 

 eggs are -four, arranged in the same manner, and the young 

 are covered with down having a slight greyish tinge. 



THE SAND-PIPER (Totanus). 



There is a succession of birds which inhabit and find their 

 food upon all the varied surfaces near the fen, the river, and 

 the sea, from the hard bank or beach of sand or gravel, to 

 the soft sludge in the morass or the water-course, and which 

 are all remarkable for the fleetness of their walk, generally 

 for the rapidity and the wheeling and doubling of their 

 flight, and especially for the length and often for the peculiar 

 structure of their bills. They are, generally speaking, birds 

 which live rather remote from the dwellings of man ; com- 

 paratively few of them appear resident in Britain throughout 

 all the year; many of them make their appearance only occa- 

 sionally as stragglers, some come as spring or summer, and 

 others as autumnal or winter migrants; but they all feed 

 upon animal substances, which they find on the surface or 

 in the earth. None of them by possibility do any harm 

 to man, and the whole or nearly the whole are, when in 

 proper season, very highly prized as food. The loneliness of 

 their haunts, the swiftness of their motions, the shrill and 



