174 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



their larvae. Much of this food is obtained as the bird scoops or draws its long, 

 slender, upturned bill from side to side across the surface of the soft mud or 

 sand. The bill is never probed into the surface. Occasionally an insect is 

 caught as it sits upon the water or flits slowly by. The Avocet often feeds 

 whilst wading in the shallows, and sometimes its head is actually pushed under 

 the surface. When food is captured the bird generally swallows it by tossing up 

 the head. The note of this bird is a somewhat low yet clear til-it, til-it, most 

 persistently uttered when its breeding grounds are invaded. 



Nidification. — The breeding season of the Avocet commences early in 

 May in Jutland ; but in the valley of the Danube, where all birds for some 

 unknown reason (possibly influenced by the annual inundations of the great 

 river) nest later, the eggs are not laid until the beginning of June. This bird 

 breeds in colonies of varying size, and all through the nesting season is most 

 sociable. The nests are either placed on the bare sand or mud or on the short 

 herbage of the marshes, and are little more than hollows into which a few 

 scraps of withered herbage are collected. The eggs are generally three or four in 

 number, but in rare cases five are said to have been found. They are pyriform 

 in shape, and pale buff in ground-colour, spotted and blotched with blackish-brown, 

 and with underlying markings of grey. They measure on an average 1"95 inch 

 in length by 1'4 inch in breadth. Both parents assist in the duty of incubation, 

 which according to Naumann lasts from seventeen to eighteen days. One brood 

 only is reared in the year, after which event the birds become even more 

 gregarious. The exact manner in which the old birds, with their long, recurved 

 beaks, convey food to the young is still undetermined. Even in the nestling stage 

 of its existence the bill of the Avocet is distinctly recurved. 



Diagnostic characters. — Becm-virostra, with the forehead, crown, and 

 hind neck black, and the innermost secondaries white (adult) ; brown in young in 

 first plumage, the secondaries barred with white. Length, 18 inches. 



