338 CHA.BADElIDiE. 



but in the hot weather they become partly dried up (at which 

 time the annual salt ' collections ' take place), leaving around them 

 a wide belt of foreshore consisting of a mixture of mud and sand, 

 covered in many parts by tracts of shell-fragments. In places 

 these gravelly shell-wastes are worked into little mounds and 

 hollows by the feet of cattle driven along the shore of the leways 

 to their feeding-grounds. In these spots I invariably found JH. 

 cantiana nesting. On the top of a little mound 6 inches high there 

 would be a small hollovv worked out and bottomed with a number 

 of little shell-fragments, just large enough to contain three eggs. 

 This was the general number of eggs, and was never exceeded ; 

 in some I found two, and in others, where the clutch was incomplete, 

 only one. The eggs I procured were not all of the same type, 

 differing both as regards ground-colour and character of marking. 

 As a rule the ground vras olive-grey, covered in some instances 

 nearly uniformly with small irregular blots of dark sepia over 

 indistinct spots of bluish grey, with here and there streaks and 

 pencillings of a deeper hue ; in others, of the same ground, the 

 markings were most numerous at the obtuse end and the egg 

 covered with longer streaks and scratches. A larger type than 

 this was stone-yellow, with the markings consisting almost en- 

 tirely of streaked blotches and zigzag pencillings of rich sepia. 

 The largest measured 1-24 inch by 0-91, and the smallest 1"2 by 

 0-86. My eggs were all taken between the 27th of June and 14th of 

 July, and were in most instances far advanced in incubation, besides 

 which a fair proportion of nestlings were observed, showing the 

 early part of the former month to be the commencement of the 

 breeding-season. All the old birds had already lost the black 

 frontal band, which I had found perfect in birds shot the previous 

 year in the same district as early as the 17th of March, thus re- 

 ducing the breeding-dress to a duration of only four months." 



Colonel Legge subsequently found nests of this Plover near 

 Trincomalie in a dried-up field and at Kanthelai tank on shingly 

 banks, both at the beginning and end of July. 



He tells us that the largest egg he procured measured 1-23 inch 

 by 0-91, and the smallest 1-1 by 0-84. 



.ffigialitis duhia (Scop.). The Lesser Ringed Plover. 



^gialitis philippensis (Scop.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 640. 



^gialitis fluviatilis {Bechst.), Hume, Hough Draft N. Sf E. no. 



849. 

 ^Egialitis dubia (Scop."), Hume, Cat. no. 849. 



The Lesser Ringed Plover breeds pretty well aU over India. 



Dr. Jerdon says that " Burgess found them (in the Deccan) 

 breeding in April on sandbanks in the middle of rivers, laying 

 three eggs on the bare sand, of a rich stone-colour, spotted and 

 freckled with grey and brown." 



