HABITS OF THE GREAT PLOVER. 175 



and made another quick run in pursuit, coming up again, and 

 again making his quick little pecks, but unsuccessfully as before. 

 There was then the same pause followed by the same run, then a 

 close near chase, and finally the moth was caught and eaten. 

 What I had taken for a small thistle-down had been probably 

 therefore (though the other is possible) a small white moth. It 

 was quite a distance from where the bird first sighted the moth to 

 where he finally caught it. In another chase, the object of which 

 I was unable to see (twilight coming on), the same bird, at the 

 end of a run, made a straight-up jump into the air (missing it, I 

 think). This latter action I have not observed before, but the 

 quick eager runs with sudden start-stops between — the head 

 thrust eagerly forward — were so exactly the habitual actions of 

 these birds (as I have often watched them at a greater or less 

 distance through the glasses) that I now feel sure they are usually 

 pursuing low-flying moths or other insects at such times. I had 

 before often connected these actions with something on the 

 ground — imagining a fresh object for each run — and had won- 

 dered both at the eyesight of the bird and its apparent want of 

 interest when it got to the spot. Aerial game had not occurred 

 to me. 



Later, another of the few birds near me kept running about 

 at short intervals in an excited manner, waving or rather flinging 

 its wings about in a tumultuous manner. 



Another one, quite close (but now getting dark), seemed much 

 occupied in probing or picking up something from the ground; 

 but all at once it also made a run forward, throwing about its 

 wings, and did so several times afterwards in a way which 

 suggested a relation between this and its search for food on the 

 ground, or whatever else the actions suggesting such search may 

 have really been. (Query. Did it attempt to beat down a low- 

 flying moth with its wings ? But the one that caught two moths 

 —and this was very likely the same bird — made no such attempt, 

 nor did the action suggest that at all forcibly.) In the two other 

 birds this excited running about and beating of the wings sug- 

 gested anything rather than a part of any process of food-getting. 

 I incline to think that the ground probing or pecking action has 

 some other meaning. Their sad wailing cry uttered all about by 

 the birds whilst on the ground, as also whilst flying. 



