137 
NOTE ON THE NESTING OF THE PEEWIT. 
IN WHAT TIME DOES THE PEEWIT LAY HER 
CLUTCH OF FOUR EGGS? 
RICHARD HOWSE, 
Curator of the Museum, Newcastle-on-Tyne; and Hon, Sec. T3 neside Naturalists 
Field Club, etc. 
Realat the Joint Evening Meeting of the Nat. Hist. Society, and Tyneside 
Nat. Field Club, April 5th, 1892. 
Ar Eastertide, 1880, I made an observation on the nesting habit 
of the Peewit (Vanel/lus vulgaris), which seemed entirely new, and 
which, so far as I am aware, has not been mentioned or recorded 
by any writer on the habits of birds in any work on ornithology. 
It is, I believe, the generally accepted opinion, that all birds after 
commencing to lay, deposit one egg per day of twenty-four hours. 
This appears to be the acknowledged rule with regard to domestic 
poultry, and also with regard to those small well-known birds whose 
habits are of easy observation, but there are some rare deviations 
from this rule among domestic fowls, for it is well known that some 
hens lay two eggs per day occasionally, but not so regularly as to 
invalidate the rule of one egg per day of twenty-four hours. Till 
within a few years I certainly thought this was the general rule for 
all birds, but an observation made at Easter, 1880, led me to doubt 
the universality of this habit of one egg per day among the Plovers, 
and to conclude that at least some of them laid their clutch of four 
€ggs in a much shorter space of time than four days. 
On the Saturday morning preceding Easter, 1880, I searched for 
Peewits’ eggs with a friend in a small field, on the edge of an exten- 
Sive moor in Redesdale. The field was very small, and sloped rapidly 
towards the south, and was enclosed with high stone walls, and was 
well sheltered from the cold east winds which were then prevailing. 
A dozen or more Peewits were hovering about over the field, and on 
Our entering it, the birds did not disperse, but kept hovering round 
us, but did not cry vociferously as when they have nests or young. 
We were, however, induced to think by their behaviour and their not 
dispersing, that their nesting operations were begun. The field, the 
lower part of which was in rigs, was regularly quartered, and carefully 
Searched over, rig by rig, for a long time, with the result that only 
humerous false nests, or slight depressions trodden down into the 
ground by the birds, were seen. With some reluctance, after our long 
