NOTES AND QUERIES. 193 



nests, and some appeared to be sitting. ^ did not actually see any 

 eggs in the nests, as most of them wer6 placed in situations difficult of 

 access, but I know that laying must have commenced, as on one 

 occasion I saw a Raven, which had a nest and young near at hand, 

 swoop down on a Shag's nest and fly away with one of the large white 

 eggs in its bill. — F. L. Blathwayt (Monk's Legs Terrace, Lincoln). 



Nesting of the Ringed Plover (.Egialitis hiaticula). — The nidifi- 

 cation of this Plover is one of the most interesting adopted by British 

 birds, interesting not only in itself, but in the light it throws upon the 

 evolution or rather development in nest building of birds in general. 

 In this neighbourhood the Ringed Plover builds at least three styles or 

 classes of nests : — 



Class 1. — What might be called primitive nests, viz. the eggs laid in 

 a very slight depression, without any attempt to line the cavity. This 

 occurs on smooth gravel banks, also on the rough shingle of the sea- 

 shore. 



Class 2. — The eggs laid in fields, the cavity of the nest lined with 

 fragments of broken shells or small pebbles, sometimes both. In this 

 case the nest was situated in a field of sprouting wheat quite five 

 hundred yards from the seashore. 



Class 3. — Is the most interesting. Constructed also in fields, 

 where the eggs are laid on small pebbles, with a few twigs placed on 

 the latter. There are also some twigs scattered about in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of the nest. 



This to my mind suggests the commencement of building with 

 vegetable material, and to be only a few stages removed from the 

 built nest described and figured (Zool. 1902, p. 28). In my experience 

 the eggs usually lie with their pointed ends turned inward during the 

 whole process of incubation, but there are exceptions to this rule, 

 where one, two, or sometimes even three, point sideway. When a 

 Ringed Plover is surprised on her eggs, she almost invariably runs 

 some distance from the nest before taking flight. This run is com- 

 paratively short on the seashore, but when sitting in a field she runs 

 further, sometimes two hundred yards at least, before flying. My 

 experience coincides with Mr. Gurney's that the young are not hatched 

 simultaneously. — J. E. H. Kelso (Southsea, Hants). 



[Dr. Kelso has forwarded us some excellent photographs of these 

 nests, which we regret we have not space to reproduce. — Ed.] 



Scolopax rusticula breeding in Kent. — It may interest some of the 

 readers of ' The Zoologist : to know that in the second week of last 

 Zool. 4th aer. vol. VII., May, 1903. q 



