112 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 
and find interest in the thought that just as now 
this bird may be seen, so in the old far-away 
dynastic days it must have been a familiar bird, 
or it would certainly not have been selected for 
use in picture and hieroglyph. Some few breed 
in Egypt, it is said; but certainly the bulk all 
go north and west when spring-time comes. This 
is the bird that supplies gourmands with their 
annual dainty of Plovers’ eggs; it lays four in 
the simplest of nests—a mere slight depression in 
the ground—and as soon as the young are hatched, 
within a few hours of actual birth into the outer 
world, they are running about nimbly on their own 
little legs, and, at the instigation of their fond 
parents, catching flies and insects with their own 
little bills. In this matter of the helplessness, or 
reverse, of newly-hatched birds, is a most interest- 
ing field for research. The proud eagle’s young are, 
for a long time, as helpless as our own babies, and, 
it is alleged, have sometimes to be forcibly pushed 
out of the home; whilst, as we have seen, Plovers’ 
young are born almost self-supporting. And this 
precocity, as it seems, is also seen in young ducklings, 
and in all the so-called game-birds: all they ask 
for is their mother’s wings to protect them against 
the weather, and warmly shelter them at night. 
