82 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



is abruptly separated from it) ; upper tail-coverts and tail white, barred with black ; 

 lores, a narrow under eyebrow, chin, ear-coverts, front and sides of neck, and all 

 the breast, jet black, with a white border all round this black area ; rest of under 

 parts white; axillaries black; feet and legs black. A small hind toe. Length i2| 

 inches; wing yf ; first primary longest by | inch. The female in summer 

 resembles the male, but has a few white feathers amongst the browner black of 

 the under parts. 



In autumn and winter there is no black except on the bill and feet, the wing- 

 qnills and axillaries. The latter even have a brownish tinge now. On the 

 upper parts, what was black is now dark grey-brown and the under parts are 

 dirt}' white, the upper breast slightly browner and streaked with grey-brown. 



The young in first plumage are apt to be mistaken for young Golden Plovers, 

 as the feathers of the upper parts are tipped with yellow. This, however, is not 

 nearly of so golden a shade as the Golden Plover wears ; and the blackish axillaries, 

 larger size and stouter bill, with the hind toe, separate the two at once. 



The nestling closely resembles that of the Golden Plover, but the yellow is 

 duller and the mottling of the upper parts is coarser and less delicate. 



The male in siimmer was shot off a nest containing four eggs, in Kolguiev 

 (8, 7, 95) ; the autumn and winter birds I have obtained on the British coasts ; 

 the nestling came from Kolguiev, 12, 7, 95. 



From the nests we found in Kolguiev, I should say that the Grey Plover's 

 nest is a deeper cup than that of the Golden Plover. It is placed on a slight 

 hummock, or ridge, when the ground is wet, on a flat, often boggy, plateau, thirty 

 to one hundred feet above the sea and often not far from it. The lining of the 

 cup, which is just large enough to contain the four eggs, is very slight, and 

 consists, when there is an}', of a few fine twigs ; but the nest usually contains 

 broken grass and reindeer lichen only. The eggs are larger than those of the 

 Golden Plover, and very much like them, but the black markings are rather more 

 irregular and less in the form of spots. Length lA inches b}- if, to af by ij. 

 The first authentic eggs were taken b}- ^Middendorf, on the Taimyr ; Seebohm 

 and Harvie-Brown were the next to hit upon them, on the River Petchora {i.e., in 

 Europe), where the}^ found ten nests. In 1894, Trevor-Battye found two in the 

 Island of Kolguiev, and the next j'ear our part}' (^lessrs. H. J. and C. E. Pearson, 

 Col. Feilden, and I) found seven with eggs, and obtained young in down from 

 others, also in Kolguiev. Besides these, I do not know if an}- one else has taken 

 the eggs. I ought to add that the male bird from Kolguiev, described above, has 

 two bare hatching spots on the breast, from which it appears that incubation in 

 this species also is, at all events, largely shared by the male. 



