ESACUS. 335 



Esacus recurvirostris (Cuv.)- The Great Stone-Plover. 



Esaeua recurvirostris (Ouv.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 662 ; Hume, Rough 

 Draft N. Sf E. no. 868. 



The Great Stone-Plover breeds throughout India in the beds of 

 all our larger rivers, by preference where banks of sand and shingle, 

 or outcrops of rooks mingled with patches of sand, occur. 



I have never found nests elsewhere than in the beds of rivers. 

 Colonel Gr. F. L. Marshall, whose note I subjoin, has found them 

 in a ploughed field far away from any river. I cannot, however, 

 look upon this as other than a very abnormal and exceptional 

 occurrence. I have found the eggs in the North- West Provinces in 

 March ; in the Punjab towards the close of April. Colonel Marshall 

 seems to have found his in June (when (Edicnemus scolopax would 

 have been breeding) in the Saharunpoor District. I have certainly 

 seen a hundred nests of this species, and I think I am entitled to 

 conclude that, setting aside abnormal occurrences, they do always 

 breed in Northern India, in the beds of rivers, from March to the 

 middle of May. I quote two out of many notes that I have 

 recorded about the nidification of this species : — 



" We took many eggs of the Great Stone-Plover, on the 12th 

 and 13th March, near Sheregurh on the Jumna. It only lays two 

 eggs, and deposits them in a rather shallow circular depression in 

 the sand. In one instance we found the eggs on the crest of a low 

 bare sandbank on which no other bird was breeding and where 

 there were no rocks near, but in every other case (and we took at 

 least twenty pairs of eggs) they were in and about rocky reefs (here 

 of a kind of compact kunker) entirely surrounded by water, and 

 very often beneath overhanging ledges of rock. In one or two 

 cases they were inside cavities of the rock, but always where there 

 was some little sand on which the eggs rested. Usually two or 

 more pairs of these and of Hophpterus ventralis breed in pretty 

 close contiguity, and one could usually tell there were eggs near, 

 by the way in which the female stood watching our proceedings 

 from a, comparatively speaking, short distance. Of the eggs taken 

 one hatched off in our hands, and some were quite fresh ; but these 

 were the minority. The eggs are large and somewhat oval, but 

 vary much in size and somewhat in shape too, some being more 

 pointed than others, but none of them nearly so much so as the 

 Lapwing's. The ground-colour varies in shade : — in some it is a 

 cold stone-colour ; in others a pale ohve-brown ; in others there 

 is a warmer, perhaps I should say more coffee-coloured, tint. The 

 markings are brown, in some almost black, in others of a burnt- 

 sienna hue : some eggs have a few large bold blotches and a few 

 smaller subsidiary spots and a great portion of the ground 

 unmarked ; others are throughout streaked and speckled, leaving 

 nowhere any parts of the ground as big as a pin's head unmarked ; 

 and between these extremes there is every possible variation. All 

 the eggs have a few small secondary markings of a pale dull pur- 

 plish brown, but these are scarcely visible, except where the primary 



