The Turnstone. ^^ 



on tlie upper parts than I have seen in any western specimen. Birds shot on our 

 coasts in autumn have invariably, in my experience, begun to put on autumn 

 dress. 



The female is a slightly dingier copy of the male, with less chestnut above. 



In winter old birds lose nearly all the rufous of the upper parts, and much 

 of the orange of the legs. 



Young birds have faint traces, only, of the chestnut on the wing-coverts and 

 tertiaries ; the upper parts are dark brown, with darker centres to the feathers 

 and narrow light tips ; back, throat and under parts white, the black gorget mixed 

 with brown, and its branches on the sides of head and neck barely indicated ; legs 

 and feet dirty orange. 



Nestling (Bieluscha Bay, Novaya Zemlya, 26, 7, 95) above, including side of 

 head and neck, grey- fawn colour, warmer on wings; lower back mottled with 

 black; under parts white, with a dusky grey pectoral band. 



Hewitson first found the Turnstone nesting, on islets off the Norwegian 

 coast; others, like him, have found it breeding quite close to high- water mark, 

 and I had some diflEculty, till we found the nest, in persuading my companions 

 when in Kolguiev, that it nested on low fells a mile or two from the sea. The 

 first nest I had experience of was on a bare lichen-covered moor in Iceland some 

 five hundred feet above the sea, and seven miles from it, whence I got four 

 eggs. The nests we got in Kolguiev were in similar places, and in Novaya 

 Zemlya the birds, with their young, were still on the higher ground. The nest 

 is a slight hollow, lined, in those I have seen, with fragments of the surrounding 

 lichen. Near the sea the nest is often placed under shelter of a stone, or tall 

 plant, and generally lined with a few bents. The four eggs are laid about the 

 middle of June (or later in the far north) and are of a greenish-grey colour, 

 spotted and streaked with blue-grey and dark brown; size ij inch, or a little 

 more, by about an inch. Bare incubating patches are found on the breasts of 

 both sexes equally, shewing that the duty of sitting on the eggs is shared fairly. 



The Turnstone, like the larger Ringed-Plover, Sanderling and Dunlin, is a 

 tame confiding bird in our latitudes and shews little fear of man — at first. It 

 feeds on the shores, paying less attention to the state of the tide than any 

 other Limicoline bird I know, feeding at high- and low-water impartially. In the 

 former case its ways can be easily watched and enjoyed. It then frequents the 

 line of " sea- ware " at high-water mark, and hunts busily amongst the rubbish 

 for sand-hoppers, and the larvae of flies, which breed there abundantly. So doing, 

 it constantly employs the curious motion, which has gained it a local name 

 almost all over the world. It inserts its bill under a shell, stone, or, more 



Vol. V. O 



