PIPING PLOVER. 155 



bv night, the female is careful to sit upon them. Her mate is extremely 

 attentive to her during the period of incubation, and should you happen 

 to stroll near the nest, you are siu'e to meet him at his station. The 

 eggs, which are four, and have their points placed together, measure 

 one inch and one-eighth by seven and a half eighths, are pyriform, 

 broad, and flatly rounded at the larger end, and tapering directly to 

 the smaller, which is also rounded. They are of a pale bluish-bufF 

 colour, sprinkled and lined nearly all over with dark red, brown, and 

 black. Only one brood is raised in the season. The yovmg, which go 

 abroad immediately after they are hatched, run with remarkable speed, 

 and, at the least note of the parent bird indicative of danger, squat so 

 closely on the sand, that you may walk over them without seeing them. 

 Their downy covering is grey mottled with brown ; their bill almost 

 black. If taken up in the hand, they emit a soft plaintive note resem- 

 bling that of the old bird. The strange devices which their parents at 

 this time adopt to ensure their safety, cannot fail to render the student of 

 nature very unwilling to carry them off without urgent necessity. You 

 may see the mother, with expanded tail and wings trailing on the ground, 

 limping and fluttering before you, as if about to expire. It is true you 

 know it to be an artifice, but it is an artifice taught by maternal love ; 

 and, when the bird has fairly got rid of her unwelcome visitor, and you 

 see her start up on her legs, stretch forth her wings, and fly away piping 

 her soft note, you cannot but participate in the joy that she feels. 



The flight of this Plover is extremely rapid, as well as protracted. 

 It passes through the air by glidings and extended flappings, either close 

 over the sand, or high above the shores. On the ground, few birds are 

 swifter of foot : It runs in a straight line before you, sometimes for 

 twenty or thirty yards, with so much celerity, that unless you have a 

 keen eye, it is almost sure to become lost to your view. Then, in an in- 

 stant it stops, becomes perfectly motionless, and if it perceives that you 

 have not marked it, squats flat on the sand, which it so much resembles 

 in colour, that you may as well search for another, as try to find it again. 



Their notes, which are so soft and mellow as nearly to resemble those 

 of the sweetest songster of the forest, reach your ear long before you have 

 espied the Piping Plover. Now and then, these sounds come from per- 

 haps twenty different directions, and you are perplexed, as well as de- 

 lighted. At the approach of autumn, this species becomes almost mute. 



