602 The Zoologist— February, 1807. 



more were laid. This is the first instance I have heard of in which 

 this bird has thus concealed her eggs. 



Lapwing. — There is a small marsh of about two hundred acres, near 

 the island of Potton, where these birds, in company with the common 

 redshank, are in considerable numbers. They have a habit of scratch- 

 ing a great many holes in the ground before they choose one for their 

 nest. I visited the marsh on the 23rd of March, and found numbers 

 of these holes scratched, mostly in the driest parts of the ground, but 

 no nests. I visited it again on the 7th of April, and did not succeed 

 in finding any eggs, though many of the holes were lined with a few 

 bents and small dry chips of cow-dung. A day or two afterwards 

 there were eggs in several nests. I find that these birds, as also the 

 common redshank, do not arrange the eggs in the nest with their 

 small ends in the centre of it until they begin to sit : until the com- 

 plement is laid they are placed anyhow. 1 have heard the fanning 

 noise made by the male bird, when dashing about in the air, at a 

 distance of nearly half a mile. 



Redshank. — The redshank lays somewhat earlier than the peewit. 

 I found the first eggs (three in one nest) on the 7ih of April. They 

 are very clamorous birds, quitting their nests when one is yet a long 

 way off, and thus rendering them difficult to find. No bird that I have 

 seen conceals its nest so cleverly as this one : it is formed in the 

 centre of a green tuft of grass. The herbage is beaten down to form 

 at once the lining and the bottom of the nest, and the surrounding 

 blades are carefully bent over the top, completely hiding the nest from 

 view. The bird enters and leaves it at the side, closing up the openings 

 when frightened from it. The only traces of the nest are a few tracks in 

 the surrounding grass, where the bird has entered and departed from it. 

 A shepherd said to me, " I always knows, sir, there's a tooke's nest in 

 the grass when I sees these 'ere little roads in it." The eggs, as far as I 

 have observed, are always four in number, but they vary much in cha- 

 racter : they are mostly of an ochre-yellow or a greenish yellow ground, 

 with bluish gray spots, and then blotted all over, especially at the larger 

 end, with sepia : they are not so thick as the eggs of the peewit, 

 measuring from one inch nine lines to one inch eleven lines by one inch 

 three lines. The latter I have found one inch six lines in breadth, and 

 they are more pointed. One clutch of redshank's eggs had the ground 

 greenish white, with minute specks of brown over the whole surface, 

 and then large blotches and clouds of sepia round the larger end : 

 these were very much pointed, and the shells were very thin. 



