58 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



tained from Norfolk warreners that, when caught in a rabbit-trap, it occasionally 

 ejects a frog. Its note is a loud whistle, with a tremolo like a French vocalist's. 

 Charles Kingsley, (in "Yeast"), compares the cry of the Stone Plover, as it is 

 sometimes called, to a weird laugh, and locates the bird, with his usual accuracy, 

 in Berkshire in the autumn, and Cornwall in winter. Never seen but in pairs, 

 or families, during the breeding season, in autumn it packs " in lots of from five 

 to fifty," (Irby, Om : Str: Gibr: Ed: ii, 262), and frequents "ploughed fields, 

 and the banks of rivers." Hewitson represents it as breeding on sand-hills by 

 the sea, which is misleading. It breeds on "sandy flats," and often not far from 

 the sea, but not on coast sand-hills. In the autumn in our country, it frequents 

 turnip-fields, where it lies concealed through the day, and is sometimes surprised 

 by sportsmen. But it is a difficult bird to bring to bag, except by a regularly 

 organized drive. 



FAMILY GLAREOLID^. 



AN aberrant group of Limicola, separated from the rest of the Order by their 

 short curved bills, long pointed wings, and especially their forked tails, by 

 which they may be identified at a glance. They, with Cursorius, show an affinity 

 to the Bustards in that their nostrils are not situated in a long furrow; the 

 premaxilla, or bony framework of the upper half of the beak, is divided in birds 

 to admit of an opening for the nostrils. If this opening is short and circular, 

 as is usual in short-billed birds, it is called a "nasal fossa^ or pit; in long-billed 

 birds, (including all the Li77ikolce, with the exception of the two genera above- 

 mentioned), it takes the form of a long narrow "sulcus" or furrow. Cursorius then, 

 and Pratincola, differ from the rest of the Limicolce in having a short fossa narium 

 instead of an elongated sulcus. The sternum, or breast bone, also resembles that 

 of the Bustards (and Plovers) with tu:o posterior notches. Eggs two, rarely three. 

 Legs slender, bare of feathers for a short distance above the " knee," (which reaUy 

 corresponds to the human ankle) ; hind toe short and weak. The genus is con- 

 fined to the old world. Our species has its head-quarters in Southern Europe and 



