506 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
year. The home is usually beneath the spreading roots of trees, as 
the Konini (fuchsia), in logs or fallen trees, or under rocks. Eggs are 
large, oval, white or creamy white, and vary in size. Length four 
and a half inches, breadth two inches seven lines, are the dimensions 
of one in my collection. The young are quaint-looking little creatures, 
clad in grey like their parents. 
59. Apteryx haastii, Potts. 
Roa-Roa.—Nothing is known of the breeding ‘habits of this fine 
species. 
Orper VII.—Gratta—Wanine Birps. 
Family Charadrie—Plovers. 
Genus—Charadrius. 
60. Charadrius fulvus, Gml. 
Eastern Golden Plover, Spotted Plover.—This bird so widely 
distributed in both northern and southern hemispheres is at times to 
be met with about the estuaries. I have seen them in small flights on 
_ the flat grassy borders of Waihora or Ellesmere, five or six individuals 
feeding in rather close order, restless in their movements, walking 
rapidly as they fed. It is now several years since Mr. J. R. Hill, now 
of Sydney, formerly of Christchurch, procured me a couple from 
Ellesmere. In the “Trans. N.Z. Institute,” vol. XVI., Mr. Robson 
gives an interesting description of the nest and eggs:—“On the 9th 
January last a Golden plover was found sitting on three eggs at the 
northern end of Portland Island. The nest is a very simple affair, 
composed of a little grass laid in a slight hollow amongst the drift 
wood a few yards above high-water mark; the egg is large for the 
bird, being about the size of a pullet’s, ovoid, a good deal pointed, in 
colour of a light greenish-yellow, with irregular blotches of dark 
rufous brown, almost black in the larger spots, and varying in size 
from a pin’s head to a shilling, the larger being at the more obtuse 
end of the egg.” 
61. Charadrius obscurus, Gm. 
Dusky, Red-breasted, or Mountain Plover, Big Dottrel, Tuturi- 
watu, Paturiwhata, Tituriwhatu-pukunui.—This excellent gamebird 
formerly bred on the Canterbury Plains whence I have taken the nest 
in the month of October; since farms and settlements have occupied 
the waste lands of the plains, for the most part it has retired to the 
mountains of the back country. This probably will have considerable 
effect on its breeding habits, and make its season somewhat later.* 
The place selected for the nest is usually just such well grassed land 
as might be chosen by the pipit or quail, in a situation that afforded 
abundance of insect life, such as craneflies and grasshoppers, which 
often appeared in prodigious swarms, and gave promise of abundance 
of support for the young. The nest is a very slight affair, it may a 
escape observation; merely a few grass bents twisted into a round 
shape in a slight hollow in the ground, so loosely put together that 
* ““New Zealand Country Journal,” Vol, VII., p. 4. 
