124 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



of the Oyster-catcher. The food of this bird is principally mussels, whelks, 

 limpets, annelids, crustaceans, and small fish, but the tender buds and shoots 

 of various marine plants are also eaten. Its flesh, as I can testify, is not at all 

 unpalatable, especially to a hungry sportsman amidst the wilds of the Outer 

 Hebrides. 



Nidification — The flocks of Oyster-catchers begin to disband in March, 

 early in April the birds are paired, and by the beginning of May eggs may be 

 found, although laying does not become general until towards the end of that 

 month or early in June. Its breeding places are shingly beaches, low islands, 

 and rock-stacks. The nest, when on the beach, is just above high-water mark, 

 often in the line of drifted rubbish cast up by unusually high tides. Several 

 nests are often made by the bird before it is satisfied. I have seen as many as 

 half a dozen of these mock nests within a few yards of the one that contained 

 the eggs. The nest scarcely deserves the name, as it is only a little hollow in the 

 shingle, in which small pebbles and bits of broken shells are smoothed into a 

 bed for the eggs. Sometimes the eggs are found deposited on a heap of drifted, dry 

 sea-weed. Various curious sites, however, have been recorded, they having been 

 found in a deserted nest of a Herring Gull, in a meadow far from the sea, and in a 

 cavity at the top of a felled pine tree. I have seen them at the top of rock-stacks 

 fifty feet above the water, also amongst boulders in a little bay, and in the cliffs which 

 could only be reached with a boat. The eggs are usually three in number, some- 

 times four, and exceptionally only two. They are pale buff in ground-colour, 

 blotched, spotted, and streaked with blackish-brown, and underlying markings of 

 grey. They measure on an average 2'2 inches in length by 1'5 inch in breadth. 

 Both parents attend the young, but the female incubates the eggs, the period 

 being from twenty-three to twenty-four days. One brood only is reared in the 

 season, but if the first eggs are taken another clutch will be laid. The male gives 

 warning to the female of the approach of danger, and she leaves her eggs at once 

 to the safety ensured by their protective colour. The old birds become noisy 

 when their breeding grounds are invaded, especially if the young are hatched, 

 and no one who has not heard a dozen or more Oyster-catchers screaming 

 together overhead can imagine the din these birds can make. The broods and 

 their parents seem to keep much together through the autumn and winter. 



Diagnostic characters. — Hcematopus, with the lower back, rump, and 

 upper tail coverts white, and the white pattern on the primaries well developed on 

 the outer webs of the fourth and fifth. Length, 16 to 17 inches. 



