16 
PIED OYSTER-CATCHER. 
these it is reported that it often frequents the oyster beds, look- 
ing 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 is doubted by the 
inhabitants of Egg-Harbor, and other parts of our coast, who po- 
sitively assert that it never haunts such places, but confines itself 
almost solely to the sands. And this opinion I am inclined to be- 
lieve correct ; having myself* uniformly 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, containing three eggs, somewhat less than those of a hen, 
and nearly of the same shape, of a bluish cream color, marked 
with large roundish spots of black, and others of a fainter tint. In 
some the ground cream color 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 my- 
self caught them running along the beach about that period. They 
are at first covei’ed with down of a grayish color, very much re- 
sembling 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 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 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.” Gen. voL iii, p. 220. 
