THE EASTBOURNE CRUMBLES. 



65 



where there are numerous shallow pools with muddy borders and 

 single bushes scattered about. The majority are bramble- 

 bushes, but there are also thorns, dog-roses, and a few tama- 

 risks, which seem to attract birds, though they are too thin to 

 conceal them. In the summer the shingle is gay with viper's- 

 bugloss, horned-poppies, sea-campion, and many smaller plants, 

 and, after trying for seven seasons, I have, thanks to the heavy 

 dews of last autumn, successfully introduced four tufts of sea- 

 pink, one of sea-lavender, and three shoots of the famous Cley 

 "bushes" (Sueda fruticosa) — these last for the benefit of future 

 naturalists ; at present they could barely shelter a beetle between 

 them. 



Of the birds that habitually breed here, the Kedshank (Tota- 

 nus calidris) is the most interesting. Its breeding flight is sure 

 to arrest attention ; it hangs suspended with wings decurved, 

 falls several yards, and then beats up again with whirring 

 wings, like a huge moth. It here makes a very slight nest in 

 quite a small tuft of grass on the shingle. Six or seven years 

 ago these tufts were so few and meagre that the eggs were easy 

 to find. Now they have increased in number, and have ceased 

 to be a guide, and there are more broods brought off every year. 

 Some of the eggs have an unusually beautiful purple tinge about 

 them. The Kinged Plover (Mgialitis hiaticula) is more nume- 

 rous, but its eggs have always been very hard to find, scattered 

 about as the pairs are over a very wide area, and making no 

 nest whatever, unless a lining of very small pebbles can be called 

 one. Myself, I hunted two whole seasons before I found a 

 clutch. I have since found one other, and known a boy stumble 

 on a single egg. The Lapwing (Vanellus vulgaris) breeds less 

 abundantly also on the bare shingle. It makes much more of a 

 nest, and all the eggs I have seen here have always had a dark 

 yellow-ochre ground colour. I remember once finding a small 

 chick whose mother went through some strange antics. Instead 

 of feigning a damaged wing, she flew at a neighbouring bank of 

 shingle and proceeded to climb it, much as a Woodpecker climbs 

 a tree. A small and scattered colony of Terns make their nests 

 about the higher shingle, and, like the Lapwings, they mostly 

 use a fair amount of dry grass. I presume they are Common 

 Terns {Sterna fluviatilis), and so says Mr. Bates, the local 



