104 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
in the winter. Even those that reside among us the whole 
season retire in summer, to thetops of our bleakest moun- 
tains ; where they breed, and bring down their young when 
the cold weather sets in. 
The curlew, the woodcock, the snipe, the godwit, the 
golden, and the long-legged plover, the knot, and the turn- 
stone, are rather the guests than the natives of this island, 
though the nest of a 'straggling curlew, or a snipe, is some- 
times found in our marshes. They visit us in the beginning 
of winter, and forsake us in the spring. They then retire to 
the mountains of Sweden, Poland, Prussia, and Lapland, to 
breed. Our country, during the summer season, becomes 
uninhabitable to them. The ground parched up by the 
heat, the springs dried away, and the vermicular insects 
already upon the wing, they have no means of subsisting. 
Their weak and delicately-pointed bills are unfit to dig into a 
resisting soil ; and their prey is departed, though they were 
able to reach its retreats. Thus, that season when nature 
is said to teem with life, and to put on her gayest liveries, 
is to them an interval of sterility and famine. 
The lapwing, the rulT, the red-shank, the sandpiper, the 
oyster catcher, and the ringed plover, breed in this country, 
and, for the most part, reside here In summer, they fre- 
quent such marshes as are not dried up in any part of the 
year ; the Essex hundreds, and the fens of Lincolnshire. 
There, in solitudes formed by surrounding marshes, they 
breed and bring up their young. In winter, they comedown 
from their retreats, rendered uninhabitable by the flooding 
of the waters, and seek their food about our ditches and 
marshy meadow-grounds. Yet, even of this class, all are wan- 
derers upon some occasions, and take wing to the northern 
climates, to breed, and find subsistence. This happens 
when our summers are peculiarly dry, and when the fenny 
countries are not sufficiently watered to defend their retreats. 
As all these birds run and feed upon the ground, so they 
are all found to nestle there. The number of eggs gene- 
rally to be seen in every nest is from two to four; never 
under, and very seldom exceeding. The nest is made with- 
out any art ; but the eggs are either laid in some little de- 
pression of the earth, or on a few bents and long grass, 
that scarcely preserve them from the moisture below. 
The place these birds chiefly choose to breed in is in 
some island surrounded with sedgy-moors, where men sel- 
dom resort ; and in such situations we have often seen the 
ground so strewed with eggs and nests, that one could 
scarce take a step without treading upon some of them. 
