542 LITTLE RINGED PLOVER. 
abundantly in Poland and Germany, though less plentifully in Den- 
mark, Holland, Belgium, and Northern France. It does not affect 
the open sea-coast, preferring expanses of sandy soil by inland lakes 
and on rivers, and these it finds in some parts of France, the Spanish 
Peninsula (up to an elevation of 4,000 ft. in the Pyrenees), Italy, 
the south of Europe generally, and Northern Africa. In Asia it 
nests across Siberia to the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as in Japan, 
China, and in Turkestan up to an altitude of 4,000 feet ; it visits 
India as far south as Ceylon during the cold season, and even 
reaches the Moluccas and New Guinea. In Africa it has been 
recorded from Mozambique on the east and the Gaboon on the 
west. 
The usual breeding-places of this bird are sandy islets and strips 
of waste land overgrown with coarse wiry grass, on the margins of 
rivers ; also the dried-up beds of winter-torrents and elevated stony 
plains. Incubation seldom begins before the latter half of May, 
when the eggs, 4 in number, are laid in a slight hollow ; their colour 
is pale stone-buff, with minute dark brown spots and streaks, very 
different from the bolder markings prevalent in the preceding 
species : measurements 1°15 by °85 in. The usual note is rendered 
by Naumann as aa or ded ; but the love-call, chiefly uttered by the 
male when on the wing, is a more prolonged trill. The food con- 
sists of water-beetles and other insects, in search of which the bird 
has been observed to turn over small stones. e 
The adult Little Ringed Plover is smaller in size, slenderer in 
form, and one-fourth less in weight than .4. Aiaticola ; the shafts of 
the primaries are all dusky, except the outer one which is white 
(whereas in the larger species there are on the shafts flecks of white 
which form a conspicuous bar when the wing is extended) ; the 
general colour of the upper parts is even paler in .&. curonica than 
it is in Continental examples of the Ringed Plover. In spring the 
eyelids are golden yellow, and the legs are of a pale ochre colour. 
Length 6°5 in.; wing 4:5 in. The young exhibit a more decidedly 
sandy tint on the upper parts than do those of the Ringed Plover, 
and the down of the nestling is more distinctly buff. 
