102 CHARADKIIDiE. 



the verge of the shore, and would become an easy prey to the 

 gun, the two species retire in company to large tilled fields, and 

 in a closely packed flock await in patient quietude the reced- 

 ing of the waters. Though at such times one or two ringed 

 plover may be seen dotted along the edge of the flock of dunlins, 

 the species usually occupies one extremity of the general body ; 

 appearing, from their superior size and limited numbers, like 

 grenadiers to a regiment of dunlins. 



The ringed plover at all times frequents the soft oozy portion 

 of Belfast bay, as much as the sandy or gravelly, in which respect 

 it is less particular than the dunlin. At the eastern side of 

 Holywood, where the beach is of the latter nature, I have often 

 observed it to the exclusion of the dunlin, which instead keeps to the 

 vast oozy banks extending for miles to the westward of the village, 

 where also the ringed plover prevails. This merely illustrates the 

 choice of feeding ground in one locality where its nature is vari- 

 ous. Elsewhere the dunlin is met with on gravelly and sandy 

 shores. 



A singular variety of the ringed plover was shot on the 1st 

 August, 1 842, in Belfast bay. It is wholly white, except where 

 the plumage is ordinarily blackish, i. e. on the gorget, the prima- 

 ries, and a band towards the extremity of the tail ; all of which 

 are, instead, of a very pale yellowish brown. The portions of the 

 plumage, usually of a very pale yellowish white cast, are in this bird 

 of a pure white. Bill pale brown instead of black ; legs yellowish. 

 The specimen is preserved in the Belfast museum. 



I have examined adult males and females of the ringed plover, 

 shot on the same day in spring, that in no respect differed in 

 outward appearance from each other. 



In July 1826 I remarked a solitary ringed plover on the 

 sandy beach of the Adriatic sea near Ancona. 



It may here be mentioned of ihe Little (Ringed) Plover (C7m- 

 radrius minor) — a species which at least once occurred in England — 

 that on the 8th April, 1841, when walking in the neighbourhood of 

 Valetta (Malta) in company with Professor Edvvd. Forbes, six in a 

 flock alighted very near us, apparently to rest, and after a short time 



