72 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



plainness that they were in absolute rapport with my own. I sat 

 in the place I had chosen for a long time — half an hour at least, 

 or an hour — and began to think that I should never see the 

 return of the female to the nest— for I had startled her off it in 

 the first instance — when, all at once, my eye happened to catch 

 her standing there, and putting up the glasses I saw her make 

 the series of little advances, with short pauses between, which 

 ground-laying birds are accustomed to do when returning to their 

 eggs, and shortly go on to them. All this while the male Golden 

 Plover had kept by me, but now he gradually and, as it were, 

 in an unabrupt manner, took his leave, and for another hour, 

 perhaps — more, I think, for it is now nearly 9 p.m. — I have 

 been left alone. His cue apparently had been to watch me 

 narrowly and, if possible, to get me away till his consort 

 thought it safe to return to the nest, after which he was off 

 duty. My own cue now, however, is to approach the nest again 

 and see what happens. Accordingly I do so, but nothing 

 happens that happened before, for the female bird sits on till I 

 am almost on her, and there is no male to divert me this time. 

 Still I feel sure that the one that was there and watched me so 

 narrowly was the sitting bird's mate. He cannot, after all, be 

 always at the nest. 



Keturning, now, to the tent, I have the unexpected pleasure 

 of seeing four Great Northern Divers swimming on the lake 

 together. Fine handsome birds they are, with their bold con- 

 trasting colouring of black and white that would flash finely 

 in the sun, if there were one, as I have seen it do, in snatches, 

 with a single bird ; but there is no sun now for this great state 

 occasion. They have a majestic appearance, one may almost 

 say, with their velvety black heads and necks of the same, set 

 off with their white semi-collarets. They are like superb 

 Spanish beauties, with raven hair, in black mantillas, and finely 

 developed, but they have not the soft grace and loveliness — for 

 it amounts to that — of our own Bed-throated Diver (our own, 

 because it breeds with us) whose charm is more subtle and 

 captivating — a fay, an Undine. All these four birds swim with 

 a curious sort of uncertainty, seeming to have no fixed purpose 

 or direction, so that the deviation, by ever so little, of any one 

 of them from the line of advance is a reason for any or each 



