PIED OYSTER-CATCHER. 
37 
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 uniformly found these birds on the smooth beach bor- 
dering 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 
25th of May. The nest itself is a slight hollow in the sand, 
containing three eggs, somewhat less than those of a hen, and 
nearly of the same shape,' of a bluish cream colour, jnarked 
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 25th 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 greyish colour, very 
much resembling that of the sand, and marked with a streak 
of brownish black on the back, rump, and neck, the breast 
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 he 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 for a long 
time, frequenting the ponds and ditches during the day, attending the ducks and 
other poultry to shelter of nights, and not unfrequently to come up of themselves 
as evening approaches.”— Gewera/ Synopsis^ vol. iii. p. 220. 
