NOV. GOLDEN PLOVER MALLARDS. 53 



appear regularly. Near Invergordon numbers of 

 swans feed with other wild fowl on the sea-grass. 



Late in the evening the golden plovers come in 

 considerable numbers to the bare grass fields to 

 feed during the night ; but when the ground is 

 hardened by frost, they resort to the sands at the 

 ebb-tide, both by night and day. Whilst the tide 

 is high, these birds fly up to the hills, resting on 

 those places where the heather is short ; and their 

 instinct teaches them exactly when to leave the 

 hills for the sands as soon as the sea has receded 

 sufficiently ; and yet their principal resting-place is 

 fully five miles inland. 



I have observed the same instinct in the female 

 sheldrakes when sitting on theii- eggs. Although 

 several feet underground they know to a moment 

 when the tide has sufficiently ebbed, and then, and 

 only then, do they leave their nest to snatch a hasty 

 meal on the cockles, &c., which they find on the 

 sands. 



The frost and snow send all the mallards down 

 from the hill lakes to the bay. I shot a bird exactly 

 answering to Bewick's description of the dun diver, 

 excepting that it was much smaller. Bewick 

 describes his bird as twenty-seven inches in length. 

 This was only twenty inches. It was apparently 

 quite full grown. I shot it whilst it was fishing in 



