Great Plover. 377 



in Italy Corrione biondo, ' Flaxen Runner ' ; but in other countries 

 of Western Europe it appears to be almost unknown; at all events, 

 I can find no name for it in the bird lists. 



,136. GREAT PLOVER (CEdicnemus crepitans). 



This is the largest bird of the family with which we are 

 acquainted in this country : and is elsewhere known as the 

 Thick-kneed Bustard, the Stone Curlew, and the Norfolk Plover. 

 It may still be seen on our open downs during the summer 

 months, for it leaves this country for warmer latitudes in the 

 autumn, and I have met with it within the tropics in Nubia in 

 winter. Colonel Montagu imagined that it never penetrated to 

 the western parts of England, but was confined to the eastern 

 counties, where undoubtedly it is most abundant: but I have 

 information from many quarters that it was once very generally 

 known in Wiltshire, whose wide-spreading downs indeed offered 

 it the retirement as well as the space in which it delights. The 

 late Rev. G. Marsh told me that up to 1840 it was still common 

 on the downs near Salisbury. Mr. Benjamin Hay ward, of 

 Lavington, spoke of it as becoming more scarce, but still occa- 

 sionally to be seen on Ellbarrow and the higher hills. The late 

 Mr. Withers, of Devizes, mentioned that it had on several 

 occasions been shot on Roundway Down, and brought to him for 

 preservation; and Mr. W r adham Locke, of the Cleeve House, 

 Seend (to whose intimate acquaintance with birds I owe many a 

 lesson), wrote me word that he had seen a very large flock of 

 these birds in the air, migrating from north to south at the fall 

 of the year, when they made a most melodious whistling noise. 

 In addition to this satisfactory evidence, I will now add that for 

 several years past I have seen these birds on the downs of North 

 Wiltshire in a particular locality, which for obvious reasons I do 

 not desire to specify more minutely, and that during the summer 

 I can generally find them in or near their favourite haunts. Still 

 more interesting is the fact of their rearing their young in our 

 county, an instance of which was given me by the Rev. Alexander 



