AMERICAN OYSTER-CATCHER. 
55 
the Atlantic. They return to New Jersey by the close of 
April, and frequenting the sandy sea-beach, are now seen in 
small parties of two or three pairs together. They are gene- 
rally wild and difficult to approach, except in the breeding- 
season, and at times may be seen walking erectly and watch- 
fully along the shore, now and then probing the sand in quest 
of marine worms, mollusca, and minute shell-fish. Their larger 
prey is sometimes the small burrowing crabs called fiddlers, 
as well as mussels, solens, and oysters, their reputed prey 
in Europe. They seldom, however, molest the larger shell- 
fish in the United States, preferring smaller and less pirecarious 
game. Catesby, at the same time, asserts that he found 
oysters in the stomach, and Willoughby adds that they some- 
times swallowed entire limpets. According to Belon, the organ 
of digestion is indeed spacious and muscular, and the flesh 
of the bird is black, hard, and rank flavored. Yet in the 
opinion of some, the young, when fat, are considered as agree- 
able food. The nests of the Oyster-catchers are said often to 
be made in the herbage of the salt-marshes, but on the At- 
lantic coast these birds commonly drop their eggs in slight 
hollows scratched in the coarse sand and drift, in situations 
just sufficiently elevated above the reach of the summer tides. 
The eggs are laid from the first to the third week in May, 
and from the 15th to the 25th the young are hatched, and 
run about nimbly almost as soon as they escape from the shell. 
At first they are covered with a down nearly the color of the 
sand, but marked with a line of brownish black on the back, 
rump, and neck. In some parts of Europe Oyster-catchers are 
so remarkably gregarious in particular breeding-spots that a 
bushel of their eggs in a few hours might be collected from 
the same place. 
Like Gulls and other birds of this class, incubation costs 
much less labor than among the smaller birds, for the female 
sits on her eggs only during the night and morning, or in cold 
and rainy weather ; the heat of the sun and sand alone being 
generally sufficient to hatch them, without the aid of the bird 
by day. The nest is, however, assiduously watched with the 
