VISIT TO TERNERY AT WELLS-BY-THE-SEA. 365 
weather that the Swifts near the ground have their tails well 
spread, whereas those flying high with less steering to do carry 
them closed. 
The Terns seemed very sensitive to changes in temperature ; 
one I was working at sat gaping and panting in the morning 
when it was hot and sultry, and shivering in the afternoon when 
it grew overcast and a wind sprang up from the north. 
Since leaving on June 24th I have heard from Cringle that a 
great many oi the young birds died during subsequent rough 
weather, and that during some exceptionally high tides so much 
of the Point was flooded that had they occurred during the 
breeding season quite five hundred of the Common Terns’ nests 
would have been flooded, and I presume one of the Lesser Tern 
colonies would have been destroyed. He also mentions finding 
a nest of the Common Tern with two eggs in it on Aug. 17th. 
We found the Ringed Plover more intelligent than the Terns, 
making much more fuss about the camera. It certainly is not a 
timid bird—in fact, its boldness made Mr. Earl call it the ‘‘ cock 
robin of the shore.” I found it fairly easy to distinguish the 
male by its ring being a more intense black. They seemed to 
relieve one another, in sitting, every half-hour. We came 
across the feathered skeleton of one bird with the remains of 
the blunt end of the egg fixed in the pelvis, showing the mode of 
death. 
In the case of many birds, e.g. Curlew, Peewit, and Golden 
Plover, the books say that the young leave the nest as soon as 
hatched, while I have found that they remain in the nest upwards 
of sixty hours after hatching ; but as regards the Ringed Plover, 
it seems literally true, the chicks wandering off within half an 
hour of being hatched to feed on the sandy shore under the 
paternal eye, leaving their mother to hatch out the remaining 
eggs. They are much more advanced when hatched than the 
Terns. All the nests we saw had four eggs, whilst among the 
Terns this number was exceptional. 
Although we examined a good many clutches of Ringed 
Plover’s eggs, I could detect no difference in coloration, whereas 
the difference in coloration amongst the Tern’s eggs was a 
marked feature. I have noticed this variability amongst other 
birds that lay their eggs in colonies. It would be interesting to 
