PIED OYSTER-CATCHER. 
19 
The principal food, however, of this bird, according 
to European 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 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 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, 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 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 
grayish 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 be hatched in 
about three weeks ; and though they are wild when in flocks, yet 
