432 



PIED OYSTER-CATCHER. 



In search of these, it is reported that it often frequents the 

 oyster-beds, looking out for the slightest opening through 

 which it may attack its unwary prey. For this purpose the 

 form of its bill seems very fitly calculated. Yet the truth of 

 these accounts are doubted by the inhabitants of Egg Harbour 

 and other parts of our coast, who positively assert that it 

 never haunts such places, but confines itself almost solely to 

 the sands ; and this opinion I am inclined to believe correct, 

 having myself uniformly found these birds on the smooth 

 beach bordering the ocean, and on the higher, dry, and level 

 sands just beyond the reach of the summer tides. On this 

 last situation, where the dry flats are thickly interspersed with 

 drifted shells, I have repeatedly found their nests between 

 the middle and 25th of May. The nest itself is a slight 

 hollow in the sand, containing three eggs, somewhat less than 

 those of a hen, and nearly of the same shape, of a bluish cream 

 colour, marked with large roundish spots of black, and others 

 of a fainter tint. In some, the ground cream colour is desti- 

 tute of the bluish tint, the blotches larger, and of a deep brown. 

 The young are hatched about the 25th of May, and sometimes 

 earlier, having myself caught them running along the beach 

 about that period. They are at first covered with down of 

 a greyish colour, very much resembling that of the sand, and 

 marked with a streak of brownish black on the back, rump, 

 and neck, the breast being dusky, where, in the old ones, it is 

 black. The bill is at that age slightly bent downwards at the 

 tip, where, like most other young birds, it has a hard protu- 

 berance that assists them in breaking the shell ; but in a few 

 days afterwards this falls off.* These run along the shore 

 with great ease and swiftness. 



* Latham observes that the young are said to he hatched in about 

 three creeks ; and though they are wild when in flocks, yet are easily 

 brought up tame, if taken young. " I have known them," says he, 

 "to be thus kept for a long time, frequenting the ponds and ditches 

 during the clay, attending the ducks and other poultry to shelter of 

 nights, and not unfrequently to come up of themselves as evening 

 approaches." — General Synopsis, vol. iii. p. 220. 



