GREAT PLOVER. 107 



setsMre we never remember seeing one of these birds anywhere in the valleys below 

 its usual haunts. 



Of this bird Mr. Thompson says, "A Great Plover in the garden of the Zoological 

 Society, Regent's Park, London, interested me much during different visits in May, 

 1849, by remaining fixed as a statue, so long as I had patience to return its gaze, 

 in whatever attitude it happened to, be when my eye first rested on its organ of 

 vision. I tried from the different sides of the aviary, and found its performance the same 

 from all. The earnestly fixed gaze of its large and prominent dark eye had a very 

 singular effect." 



The Great Plover is monogamous; with the time of pairing we are unaccpiainted, 

 but it is probably early, as incubation commences before May. 



The note of the Great Plover, which is very peculiar, is a kind of shrill whistle, and 

 has been compared to the noise made by the creaking of a winch-handle, or axle of a wheel- 

 barrow which wanted oiling ; this may be considered a fanciful comparison, but there is cer- 

 tainlv much similarity between the sounds produced by those engines and the Thick-knee. 

 The note is repeated several times in succession, and has been syllabled by the word 

 'turrlui, turrlui, turrlui.' The specific name, crepitans, would appear to have been not 

 inappropriately applied to this bird in consecpience of its discordant note. 



The food of the Thick-knee consists of insects of all kinds, particularly beetles, many 

 of which are to be found during the day under the stones among which these birds live ; 

 at night they come out, and fall a prey to the sharp-eyed Plover. They also feed on 

 slugs, worms, and, it is said, small reptiles and animals, such as frogs and field-mice. 



Incubation commences about the middle of April. 



The female makes no nest, but lays her eggs on the bare ground, and usually among 

 stones, which afford an admirable shelter from observation, so closely do these birds, 

 eggs, and young resemble them in colour. 



The eggs are two in number, of a "pale clay brown, blotched, spotted, and streaked 

 with ash blue and dark brown." They measure in length two inches and two lines; 

 and in breadth one inch and seven lines. The female takes no precaution to hide her 

 eggs or young, farther than by the careful selection of a suitable place for incubation, 

 where the natural colour of the ground, as just stated, gives them almost complete 

 security. 



The adult male has the bill black at the point, the base greenish yellow; irides, 

 yellow. Top of the head and back of neck, pale yellowish brown, each feather streaked 

 in the centre with umber brown: a light-coloured streak runs under the eye from the 

 upper mandible to the ear coverts; beneath this streak is another of brown. The back 

 and upper tail coverts, the wing coverts and tertials are reddish ash-colour, each feather 

 having a central longitudinal streak of umber brown. Primaries, purplish black; the 



