EUDEOMIAS MODESTA 119 



when crossing the island on the 20th of September. A month 

 later, I saw another pair in similar country on the track 

 between Useless Bay Settlement and Cheena Creek. Sub- 

 sequently it proved plentiful in pairs on the summit of the 

 Cheena Creek Range. 



Eudromias is a bird of extraordinarily variable haunt. It 

 differs from other Plovers in these regions in being found almost 

 solely on dry grass -land and on the tops of mountain ranges : 

 never once did I see it in a marshy place, and only once a small 

 flock of three on the sea shore. On the Cheena Creek Range 

 I found it breeding; and caught one of the young on the 14th 

 of November. It is a wild restless bird, which I had some 

 difficulty in shooting with the '410. The flight is low and 

 rapid : it gets away quickly, and usually compassing a good 

 long distance, alights on a hummock of Azorella. The call is 

 curiously melancholy : a long-drawn plaintive musical '"'"P-i-i-r-u^'' 

 as it were bewailing the solitude of these bleak wind-swept 

 regions, where hardly another bird was to be seen except Attagis 

 and a single example of Myiotheretes rujiventris. 



On making the first ascent of the mountain named after him 

 in February 1827, Surgeon Tarn, of the "Adventure," shot two 

 examples at about 2,000 ft. alt. 



Darwin records the Red-breasted Plover from Tierra del 

 Fuego, where it inhabited both the sea shore and the bare 

 summits of the mountains ; from the Falkland Islands, where 

 it frequented the upland marshes; from Chiloe, where he met 

 with large flocks in the fields not far from the coast ; and from 

 Uruguay, on inland grassy plains. 



Capt. Abbott says it is a migrant in the Falkland 

 Islands, where it first appears in the beginning of September, 

 when the dry peat-banks in all parts are covered with these 

 birds. The breast plumage is then of a beautiful red. It 

 lays the first week in October, placing its eggs, which are two 

 in number, on the dry moss, without making any nest. The 

 eggs are so nearly the colour of the surrounding ground that one 



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