BLACK-HEADED PLOVER 117 
still to be seen by those going up or down by 
water. Mr. KE. Cavendish Taylor, writing in 1867, 
says, “This bird is abundant all along the Nile 
above Cairo, wherever the banks of the river are 
muddy.” Captain Shelley in 1870, referring to it, 
says, “It is plentifully distributed throughout 
Egypt and Nubia, but it is most abundant in 
Upper Egypt between Siool and Thebes.” I 
myself saw it many times in 1875, whilst going up 
and returning, in good quiet-fashioned way, by 
dahabeah ; but when I again went over the same 
ground in 1908, although going very slowly and 
stopping every day, I only find, from my notebook, 
that we saw it three or four times in our six weeks’ 
journey from Thebes to Cairo. All that we saw 
were wild and anything but the confiding birds one 
has been taught to regard them. I think by far 
the most notable thing about this bird is its curious 
habit of laying its eggs on the sand, and then care- 
fully burying them with the clear purpose of letting 
the genial sun do the bulk of the work of hatching 
out. Captain Verner gives a most interesting and 
detailed account of watching the movements of one 
of these birds on a sandbank. He went to the place, 
he writes, “ And at the precise spot turned over the 
sand, and about half an inch below the surface 
