TURNSTONE. 
17 
breed, wandering 1 southerly in autumn. It is said to 
build on the ground, and to lay four eg'gs, of an olive 
colour, spotted with black, and to inhabit the isles of 
the Baltic during 1 summer. 
The turnstone Hies with a loud twittering 1 note, and 
runs with its wing’s lowered ; but not with the rapidity 
of others of its tribe. It examines more completely the 
same spot of ground, and, like some of the woodpeckers, 
will remain searching 1 in the same place, tossing’ the 
stones and pebbles from side to side for a considerable 
time. 
These birds vary greatly in colour; scarcely two 
individuals are to be found alike in markings. These 
varieties are most numerous in autumn when the young 
birds are about, and are less frequently met with in 
spring. The most perfect specimens I have examined 
are as follows : 
Length eight inches and a half, extent seventeen 
inches ; bill, blackish horn ; frontlet, space passing 
through the eyes, and thence dropping down and 
joining the under mandible, black, enclosing a spot of 
wdiite. Crown, white, streaked with black; breast, 
black, from whence it turns up half across the neck; 
behind the eye, a spot of black ; upper part of the 
neck, white, running dow r n and skirting the black breast 
as far as the shoulder; upper part of the back, black, 
divided by a strip of bright ferruginous ; scapulars, 
black, glossed with greenish, and interspersed with 
rusty red; whole back below r this, pure white, but hid 
by the scapulars; rump, black; tail-coverts, white; 
tail, rounded, wdiite at the base half, thence black to 
the extremity ; belly and vent, white ; wings, dark 
dusky, crossed by two bands of wdiite ; lower half of 
the lesser coverts, ferruginous ; legs and feet, a bright 
vermilion, or red lead ; hind toe, standing inw r ards, and 
all of them edged with a thick warty membrane. The 
male and female are alike variable ; and when in perfect 
plumage nearly resemble each other. 
Bewick, in his History of British Birds , has figured 
and described wdiat he considers to be, tw o species of 
VOL. III. b 
