264 AVES— ORDER CHARADRIIFORMES. 



cormicki. The long-tailed skuas (Stercorarivs) differ from the members of 

 the preceding genus in having more or less elongated central tail-feathers, 

 these being developed in some of the species to a great length. Tlie 

 members of the genus Stercorarius are three in number, all of them breeding 

 in the high north, and visiting more southern localities in winter. With the 

 exception of the Pacific coast of South America, where only the pomatorhine 

 skua (S. pomatorUinus) has been known to occur, the whole of the other 

 Southern oceans appear to be visited by these skuas. They all nest on the tundra 

 of the Arctic regions, and the pomatorhine skua and Buffon's skua are only 

 winter visitors to the British Islands, but Richardson's skua {8. crepidatus) 

 nests in the Orkneys and Shetland Isles, as well as in some of the Hebrides 

 and on the north-west of Scotland. Like their larger relatives, these smaller 

 skuas live principally by robbing the terns aud smaller gulls of the fish they 

 capture. They will also devour young birds and eggs, as well as lemmings 

 and small rodents, Crustacea, etc., while the young of Buffon's skuas are said 

 to be fed on crowberries in the summer. 



As has already been mentioned, there are many characters which the 

 Charadriiformes, or Limicoline birds, as they are often called, share with 



the gulls, the principal one being the cleft, or schizognathous 



The Plovers palate. The nostrils are almost entirely schizorhinal, or in 



and Bustards. — the form of a slit, though there are exceptions to this in the 



Order Chara- seed-snipes, the bustards, and the thick-knees. The eggs of 



driiformes. most of the Charadriiformes are peculiar to the group, being 



generally pear-shaped, four in number, and double spotted, 

 having the overlying markings black, arranged in lines, blotches, or spots, 

 and the underlying spots grey. The young are covered with down, and 

 can take care of themselves very shortly after their birth, running with 

 great swiftness, and beijig able to escape capture by their protective colora- 

 tion, which effectually conceals them in the midst of their natural sur- 

 roundings. 



There is but a single species to represent this sub-order, and it is one of the 

 most peculiar of birds. Wliile possessing anatomical characters which show that 



it is an aberrant kind of plover (though many observers have 

 The Crab- considered it to be rather an aberrant kind of tern), it 

 Plovers. — diflers from all gulls and plovers in laying a pure white egg. 

 Sub-order Its nesting habits are in fact altogether peculiar. Not onlj 

 Dromades. does it lay a white egg, but only one, and that is placed in a 



tunnel hollowed out in the sand, as described below. The 

 crab-plover is a handsome black and white bird, the mantle being black, and 

 having the plumes elongated, so as to form a swallow-tailed patch when the 

 laird is flying. It is long-legged, like a thick-knee or stone-plover, and 

 inhabits the coast-land of Eastern Africa and Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and 

 the eastern shores of the Indian Ocean, as far as Ceylon, i-eappearing in the 

 Andamans and the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. It probably 

 breeds in most of the above localities, but the headquarters of the species 

 seem to be in the Persian Gulf, and the coasts of Arabia and IMekran. Mr. 

 Nash, who visited one of the islands off Bushire, found that the birds bur- 

 rowed into the sand-hills to the distance of about four feet, and in the shape 

 of a bow, the passage being about a foot below the surface of the ground, and 

 the entrance usually near or under tussocks of grass or low shrubs, the single 

 egg being laid on the bare soil at the end of the hole, without any sign of a 

 nest. The birds nest in colonies, and the young, which are covered with 



