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AND WHAT LIVED IN THEM. 347 
earlier, as young birds, already quite strong of wing, are to 
be seen flying about by the 20th of June. Early in the 
latter month, nearly fresh eggs, eggs nearly hatched, and 
newly fledged young, of the Plover, may all be observed. 
These little nestlings are very pretty and very curious speci- 
mens of early birdhood; they can run quite cleverly over 
the sand as soon as fairly dry from the egg, if not “with 
half a shell on their backs,” as is popularly supposed to be 
the case with young partridges ; and are rather difficult to 
find, from their knack of hiding, like their parents, by 
squatting closely on the sand. Their legs seem dispropor- 
tionately long, like a young colt’s. They have black bills, 
like their parents, from the moment of birth. They are cov- 
ered all over, except a little space on the neck, with woolly 
down, that is white below, and beautifully variegated with 
black and buffy brown on the upper parts. The newly 
edged Terns are very different from the old ones, being 
curiously mottled above with different colors, in which the 
pearl-blue scarcely shows; without a black cap, the head 
being white, except some slaty feathers over the ears and 
hape ; the bill blackish, and the feet dull-colored, and the tail 
much less forked. They cannot be mistaken for any other 
Species, however, for there are none so small as they. 
We have now only to examine the eggs we have collected ; 
and here again we must give the specimens themselves pre- 
cedence over authorities. If Nuttall, for example, had had 
ours before him when he wrote of the Least Tern, we should 
hot now read in his Manual, that “the eggs, three or four 
i . . . are about one and a half inches, 
by three-quarters of an inch in breadth." Ours, we see, 
are considerably smaller than this, and of a different shape 
from that implied by these dimensions, averaging only 1.25 
inches long, by just 1.00 in breadth. The longest and 
most pointed one is 1.30 by 1.00, the shortest and round- 
est 1.20 by .98; these measurements probably d 
very nearly the extremes of variation. The ground color 
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