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THE PRATINCOLE. 
The eggs of this bird are laid upon the bare ground, and are two in number. Their color 
is rather light dingy -brown, covered with splashes and streaks of slaty-blue and dark brown. 
The male bird is supposed to aid in the duties of incubation. When hatched, the young birds 
are covered with a soft spotty down, so like the stones and soil in which they repose, that they 
can hardly be discovered even within a yard or two. For the same reason, the eggs are very 
safe from unpractised eyes. About October, the birds take their departure, assembling- 
together in flocks before they start on their travels. 
The general color of the Thick-knee is mottled brown and black. The head is brown 
streaked with black ; there is a light-colored stripe from the forehead to the ear-coverts, and 
the chin and throat are white. The back is brown streaked with black, and the quill-feathers 
of the wing are nearly black, with a few patches of white. The neck and breast are extremely 
pale brown, streaked with a darker hue, and the abdomen is nearly white, with a few long and 
very narrow longitudinal streaks. In total length the bird measures about seventeen inches. 
PRATINCOLE .— Glareola pratincola. 
The close compact plumage of the Pratincole, its long pointed wings, its deeply forked 
tali, and swallow-like form, point it out as a bird of swift wing and enduring flight. 
The Pratincole is a usual resident of the east of Europe and Central Asia. Like the swal- 
lows, to which it is so similar in form and habits that even modern zoologists have doubted 
whether it ought not to find a place among those birds rather than with the Waders, the 
Pratincole feeds much upon the wing, snapping up the insects as they come across its path, 
and especially delighting in picking the aquatic insects out of their native element without 
even staying its aerial course. Its endurance is equal to its speed, and a flight of two or three 
hundred miles is but an easy journey to this bird, which can thus pass over a very great 
extent of country in a few days. 
The nest of the Pratincole is made among thick aquatic herbage, and the eggs are gener- 
ally about five or six in number. The general color of the Pratincole is shining yellowish- 
brown above. The chin is whitish, and the front of the throat reddish- white. A narrow black 
streak runs from the eyes over the ear-coverts, and round the throat, forming the “collar,” by 
