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The female sits hard, often only flushing when almost stepped upon. Before the complement is 

 filled, and even early in incubation, she will, when disturbed, fly slowly to a little distance and 

 alight in silence to watch the fate of her charge ; but when the eggs are more advanced she 

 displays greater solicitude, and tries all her arts to draw attention from the nest to herself, 

 practising resolutely the pious deception of feigned lameness, even at the expense of her life. 

 On such occasions she is usually soon joined by her mate, who hovers slowly around with deeply 

 incurved wings, uttering the most piteous cries, that alarm the whole neighbourhood. As many 

 pairs are often breeding within ear-shot, the clamour becomes general, a dozen or more pairs 

 joining in the outcry, which does not subside until the intruder has entirely withdrawn. 



" The eggs are ordinarily four in number. The numerous sets I have collected are rather 

 notably constant in their characters, considering how variable Waders' eggs usually are. In size 

 they are from 1*70 to 1-90 inch in length by 1-25 to T30 in breadth, averaging about 1-75 

 Xl'28 inch. The shape is less pointedly pyriform than that of some species; still the charac- 

 teristic limicoline contour is rendered. The ground is pale clay-colour, or very light drab, 

 sometimes almost creamy, at other times with a slight olivaceous shade. The markings are 

 numerous, and generally distributed, though apt to be much the most thickly aggregated at the 

 larger end ; they are for the most part small, often mere dots, of sharp outline, umber-brown in 

 colour; with them are a lesser number of the underlying pale purplish-grey shell-markings. 

 However numerous, the spots are rarely if ever confluent or massed in blotches of any size ; the 

 largest I have noticed are no broader than a split pea. 



" The young birds, which are mostly all abroad before the end of June, are curious-looking 

 little creatures before they gain their feathers — helpless, clumsy, with a top-heavy appearance 

 and disproportionately long legs. They remain in the down, or at most gain but stray feathers, 

 until they are about half-grown ; and during all this time they are led about under the watchful 

 and anxious care of the mother bird, whose boldness in defence of her charge now knows no 

 bounds. Once holding a young bird I had caught in my hands, I was almost attacked by the 

 parent, who, after exhausting her artifices in behalf of her young, became frantic at the cries of 

 the captured one. In this early stage the young are entirely white below, finely mottled with 

 black, white, and rich brown above ; the feet and under mandible are light-coloured ; the upper 

 mandible is black. 



" Although eminently terrestrial, like their relatives, these Tattlers not unfrequently alight 

 on fences, posts, even limbs of trees ; in certain districts telegraph-poles are favourite stands. 

 They are generally dispersed over the northern prairies during the summer, yet they have their 

 preference for certain spots in the vicinity of moist ground. Away from the river-valleys their 

 resorts are the numberless depressions of ' rolling ' prairie, where the vegetation is luxuriant, fed 

 by the water that collects during the spring rains. Passing through such spots one often disturbs 

 a whole colony, when the birds will rise high on wing, even fifty or a hundred yards in the air, 

 and there hover, all the while vociferating remonstrance. Later in the season, when the young 

 no. longer require care, the birds 'make up' into flocks, often of immense extent, and old and 

 young together assume the routine of their lives. They leave these northern regions early : I 

 have seen none after the fore part of September. Their food is mainly insects, and during the 

 summer seems to consist principally of grasshoppers, of which almost inconceivable hosts haunt 



