414 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



making the humming noise with their wings ; I found only one 

 nest-hole, unlined. 



27th. — Three pairs of birds in the field, and found three holes, 

 not lined. 



April 3rd. — The nest-holes were unchanged, and there 

 were no birds near them, as was the case last week. But 

 four birds got up from the other side of the field, which I 

 had not previously searched. I found three nests, containing 

 four, three, and one eggs respectively. The first was a 

 depression in the moss and grass, lined with dead round stems 

 of hard grass. The second (twenty-four yards higher up the 

 field) was in such a deep tuft of grass (and protected, too, by the 

 single trailing stem of a seedling thorn) that the eggs were well 

 sheltered, but this also was lined with similar material. The 

 third nest (one egg) was higher up still, and in a very bare 

 place, so that the nest had no shelter at all from the surround- 

 ing herbage ; it was very substantial, having quite a bed of stuff 

 half an inch thick — hard round grass-stems, coarse grass-blades, 

 hard dry stems of some other plant, and a few bits of moss — and 

 was nine inches across. On the 6th I found that this egg had 

 been deserted, and I took it and found it quite fresh. Higher 

 up in the same furrow I found another single egg in a nest 

 formed of a good bed of grass, and probably laid by the 

 same bird. 



From these observations I think it is clear that early-breed- 

 ing Peewits at all events build regular nests before laying, and do 

 not merely add a little lining to the bare hole as incubation pro- 

 ceeds. I have in other years seen well-lined nests with fresh 

 eggs, stubble, squitch-roots, and potato-haulm being used, and 

 last year one of four eggs, and another empty not far off, built of 

 stubble. These were in barley-stubble with clover — short and 

 late in mowing. The nest with four eggs had a distinct rim 

 raised above the level of the ground ; this was probably because 

 the ground was too hard for the birds to be able to scratch out a 

 deep enough hole, and a raised nest would not show in the clover. 

 I remember a well-raised, built-up nest, in a foul and late wheat 

 crop early in April one year. To return to the nests of this 

 season — on April 7th, at Langley, two nests of four eggs each in 

 an old saintfoin field, which had been wheat the year before, 



