6o British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



Colour of adult : bill, short and curved, black, the base of lower and edge of 

 upper mandible vermilion; iris brown; crown and upper parts olive brown, on 

 the ^nng-coverts a slight greenish gloss ; wing quills sooty black, the first, which 

 is noticeabty longest, with a dull white shaft ; upper tail-coverts white ; tail black- 

 brown, deeply forked, (the external feathers, which have the largest white bases, 

 from 2 to 2 J inches longer than the central ones) ; throat cinnamon, margined 

 with a black hoop from the base of the upper mandible; breast and flanks like 

 the back, belly and under tail-coverts white ; axillaries (arm-pit) and central under 

 wing-coverts rich chestnut; legs dark brown. Length 9-10 J inches, wing (closed) 

 7J. Female like the males. The above from adult Eg>'ptian skins iu my 

 collection. 



Young birds have the feathers of the upper parts margined with soot)'-black 

 and tipped with fawn colour ; tail much less forked and with tawny- white feather 

 tips ; the black semi-circle round the throat only faintl}^ indicated, and the lower 

 parts indistinctly streaked with duskj- grey-brown. 



Nestling warm buff above, mottled with dusk}'- brown; a dark line from beak 

 down the back-bone ; under parts whitish, (Lilford) . 



The Pratincole makes no nest whatever, but lays its eggs in slight accidental 

 hollows on dried mud — or sand-banks — such as the print of a horse's hoof. Eggs 

 two, or three, (in Spain " three is their complement," Chapman). Seebohm once 

 found four in a nest, but there was nothing to show that this was not a joint- 

 stock affair. The eggs are not disposed in the nest with small ends inwards, as 

 the custom is amongst the Limicola, but side by side : they are verj- thin-shelled, 

 a regular oval in shape, varying in ground tint from yellow ochre to pale grej^ 

 boldly blotched and streaked with pale grey-bro-^Ti and dark sepia. Length ia- 

 lA inches by A-14 inches. The birds are ver}^ anxious when their eggs are 

 approached, and swoop at the invader's head with shrill screams, in the manner 

 of the Arctic Tern, besides trying all manner of artifices to lure bim (the invader) 

 away. I am unable to state which sex takes the greater share of the incubation, 

 probably a good deal is left to the sun in bright weather. 



The Pratincole is a bird of swift and agile flight, resembling in this the 

 Swallows, Swifts, and Terns, and thereby showing that a similar mode of life 

 induces superficial resemblances in figure. But the Pratincole also runs on the 

 ground with the agility of a Ringed-Plover. Its food chiefly consists of beetles, 

 and, failing these, of flies and other insects, which it captures principally on the 

 wing, hawking them till dark falls, but not later, in company with Bats, Terns, 

 Swifts, and Swallows. It appears in its European breeding quarters early in 

 April, laying its eggs about mid-}vlay, retiring southwards in September. Its 



