PIED OYSTER-CATCHER. 
173 
The principal food, however, of this bird, according to Eu- 
ropean writers, and that from which it derives its name, is the 
oyster, which it is said to watch for, and snatch suddenly from 
the shells, whenever it surprises them sufficiently open. In 
search of these it is reported that it often frequents the oyster 
beds, looking out for the slightest opening through which it 
may attack its unwary prey. For this purpose the form of its 
bill seems very fitly calculated. Yet the truth of these accounts 
are doubted by the inhabitants of Egg Harbour and other parts 
of our coast, who positively assert that it never haunts such 
places, but confines itself almost solely to the sands. And this 
opinion I am inclined to believe correct; having myself uni- 
formly found these birds on the smooth beach bordering the 
ocean, and on the higher dry and level sands, just beyond the 
reach of the summer tides. On this last situation, where the 
dry flats are thickly interspersed with drifted shells, I have 
repeatedly found their nests, between the middle and twenty- 
fifth of May. The nest itself is a slight hollow in the sand, con- 
taining three eggs, somewhat less than those of a hen, and nearly 
of the same shape, of a bluish cream colour, marked with large 
roundish spots of black, and others of a fainter tint. In some, 
the ground cream colour is destitute of the bluish tint, the 
blotches larger, and of a deep brown. The young are hatched 
about the twenty-fifth of May, and sometimes earlier, having 
myself caught them running along the beach about that period. 
They are at first covered with down of a grayish colour, very 
much resembling that of the sand, and marked with a streak of 
brownish black on the back, rump and neck, the bi’east being- 
dusky, where in the old ones it is black. The bill is at that age 
slightly bent downwards at the tip, where, like most other 
young birds, it has a hard protuberance that assists them in 
breaking the shell; but in a few days afterwards this falls off* 
These run along the shore with great ease and swiftness. 
* Latham observes, that the young are said to be hatched in about three 
weeks; and though they are wild when in flocks, yet are easily brought up 
tame if taken young. “I have known them,” says he, “to be thus kept 
