THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
to watch the birds to their eggs . , . The eggs are always four in 
number and usually placed in a slight depression in the sand or pebbles 
near water.”* * * § 
“ Eggs taken from October 1st to November 19th (Mudgee). Young 
seen October 30th and on to December. They occasionally, as if for amuse- 
ment, take lofty flights, wheeling about for some time and then descending 
to the earth like stones. ”t 
“ This species is practically a permanent resident, though their numbers 
vary from time to time very largely and apparently without much reference 
to the season of the year. Being a wader it naturally avoids dry times, when 
shallow waters are scarce. Generally seen singly, seldom more than a pair, 
though one day in August, 1904, I counted twenty-four of this neat httle 
Dottrel on a half-mile stretch of bare water and on another occasion 
(January 1906) I saw eight on a hole you could throw a stone across. Of these 
nests, which are very hard to see, I have only found two, one in April this year 
containing three eggs, and the other in September, 1904, with two eggs. This 
last nest was a depression formed by pushing aside a few pebbles on a quartz 
gravel bank, the cavity being slightly floored with small fragments of dried 
vegetation and portions of the flower-head of the Button grass {Eleusine 
cegyptiaca). On the 29th November, 1901, I watched a pair with two 
well-feathered youngsters. 
Mr. Robert Hall§ records a specimen secured in Sandford, Southern 
Tasmania, on October 20th, 1911. 
Although this bird was not described till 1818, it was painted by Watling, 
Nos. 249, 250 ; and Latham mentions it in manuscript as the ‘‘ Crescent Plover, 
perhaps a variety of the Ringed Plover.” The description was apparently 
never published. 
The male bird flgured and described was collected on the Dawson River, 
Queensland, by Mr. Charles Barnard, on November 24th, 1908. 
* Ramsay, Proc. Zool. Soc. (Lond.) 1877, p. 336. 
f Cox and Hamilton, Proc. Lin. Soc. N.S.W., 2nd ser., Vol. IV., p. 419, 1889. 
JBemey, Emu, Vol. VI., p. 112, 1907. 
§ Hall, ib., Vol. XL, p. 210, 1912. 
140 
