HOPLOFriiETJS. 347 



Hoplopterus ventralis ("Wagl.). The Spur-winged Plover. 



Hoplopterus ventralis (Wagl.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 650; Hume, 

 Rough Draft N. ^ E. no. 857. 



The Spur-winged Plover breeds on the banljs and in the beds 

 of most of the larger rivers of India and Burma, penetrating 

 the hills to elevations of 1500 to 2000 feet. It does not, so far as 

 my experience goes, occur in the Indus or its affluents. 



Never at any season is it seen away from running water ; it is 

 absolutely constant to streams and rivers, preferring those localities 

 in which there is a little shingle or rock, and for breeding-purposes 

 selecting, of all others, rocky promontories or islands in which the 

 rocks are interspersed with soft cushions of sand. 



I have only found their eggs in March and early in April. The 

 following note, recorded many years ago in the Etawah District, 

 gives pretty well all I know about their nidification. I have seen 

 many hundreds of their nests, but have nothing, I fear, to add to 

 what I noted when I first came across them : — ■ 



" On the 12th and 13th March, 1867, we took a great number of 

 the eggs of these birds, all in nests of four, the nests being nearly 

 seraispherical depressions in sand, just big enough to hold the eggs, 

 in and about clusters of kunker rocks in the Eiver Jumna just below 

 Sheregurh. Occasionally the depression contained a few little 

 pieces of old water-borne straw or rush, but often was quite bare. 

 We never found any in open sandbanks, such as the Terns seem 

 to prefer, nor in rocks not surrounded on all sides by water. The 

 kind of places they affect are those frequented by Esacus reeurvi- 

 rostris, and often the nests of the two birds are within a few yards 

 of each other. We did not, however, notice any nests concealed 

 under overhanging ledges of kunker, whereas the Esacus often lays 

 its eggs in such places. The ground-colour of the eggs varies 

 considerably. The most common colour is pale stone-brown, at 

 times more or less tinged with ohve, and occasionally «ith a faint 

 pinkish shade. Commonly they are profusely spotted with mode- 

 rate-sized very dark brown blotches and with numerous secondary, 

 quasi-below-the-surface, pale purplish-brown blotches ; but at times 

 they have only a few very large dark brown blotches, and jiist a 

 few very small ones, with more or less of the secondar)' markings. 

 Sometimes most of the primary markings are collected in a dense 

 zone near the larger end. The normal type of the egg is very 

 pointed, but some are much less so than others. I notice that all 

 the four eggs of any nest have invariably the same character of 

 markings. 



" By the 6th April almost all have hatched off, and the young 

 are seen scampering about. Only two nests with eggs were found 

 between Oodee and Sheregurh, and both were ready to hatch off." 



Colonel Gr. T. L. Marshall writes :— " I may add to Mr. Hume's 

 remarks on this species, which in the main are fully borne out by 

 my experience, that in the Cawnpore district I found them breeding 



