34 en eeAiianallis eine 
attitude along, not across, the branch of a tree. Juke its smaller relative, the swift, 
the meghtjar allows May to be well advanced, when there is a plentiful supply of 
insect food, before it ventures to our shores, leaving again before the end of 
September. 
But of the Breck birds, the xrimged plovers are the first to leave; they have 
generally all gone back to the shore by the end of August. The stone-curlews stay 
on until the end of October or even later, occasional specimens having been recorded 
in December and even, but more rarely, in January. It is stated that im Cornwall and 
Devonshire a few sometimes remain resident all the year; im October they gather in 
large flocks, when fifty or more may be seen together, and it would appear from the 
detailed observations of Mr. Mdmund Selous (recorded in the pages of the “ Zoologist”’) 
that they then hold some sort of concerted dance, such as some members of the plover 
family are known to do. It is at this season, too, that their wild cries are most heard ; 
but as a rule, even when large numbers are together, they do not all call at once, 
but take up the cries one after the other. 
Although in the nesting season the different birds will often, when disturbed in 
the day, fill the air with much screaming and whistling, it 1s at might that they 
are most unpressive; and the memory of one June might still remains clear and 
distinct. The day had been bright and hot, the parched sandy soil and shining flints 
reflecting and accentuating the heat of the sun’s rays; the faint echoes of very 
distant thunder, although hardly discernible, brought at intervals fitful crowings from 
the cock pheasants in the covert; the air was heavy with the fragrance of the firs, 
wafted over the barren fields by the hot breeze. But coolness comes with the 
evening, the few scattered fleecy clouds, hardly noticeable during the day, gather 
together and follow the setting sun to the western horizon, where they hang lke a 
purple grey curtain over a sea of fire and gold; a partridge is chucking to her 
chicks on the other side of the “Scotch fence,” and a solitary ringed plover, bringing 
thoughts of the sea shore, whistles shrilly as it flies by—low over the ground—the 
curtain of cloud gradu- ally lowers, shutting 
out the last glimpses of fading gold— 
unperceptibly dusk is falling—a sudden 
“clap, clap,” followed by a shrill mewing 
cry, and the brushing of soft wings through 
the air; the nightyar is abroad —doubling and 
turning as it follows the moths amone the 
davk fir trunks; it vanishes from sight as 
suddenly as it came, and the next instant 
its rolling, churring cry breaks forth in ghostly 
cadence from the tree on which it has settled. 
It is rudely broken in upon by the loud 
whistling cry of a stone- curlew, followed 
quickly by others as the birds wend their 
way overhead to their feeding grounds in the 
valleys. No other sounds are heeded now, 
for as the cries of the curlew are heard far 
above all its neighbours of the shore, so does its 
namesake,the stone-cur- lew, dominate with its 
weird melody all other EGGS OF THE NIGHTJAR. sounds of the Breck. 
