PEEWIT. 
301 
GRALLATORES. 
CIIA RA DRIIDsE. 
PEEWIT, 
GREEN PLOVER, LAPWING. 
Yanellus CRISTATUS. 
PLATE LXXYIII. 
The Peewit chooses various situations for its eggs— 
heaths, commons, marshy grounds, and ploughed fields ; 
preferring a mole-hill or other slight elevation when the 
ground is moist; they are, however, occasionally found 
quite enveloped in water. 
Like most of the same class of birds, it makes little 
or no nest; its eggs, four in number, being deposited 
upon the bare ground, or on a small quantity of dry 
grass, rushes, stalks of heath, or other plants, in a hole 
scratched for that purpose, and barely large enough to 
contain them, though arranged so as to occupy the least 
possible space, the small ends meeting in the centre. 
I have never succeeded in surprising the Peewit upon 
its eggs-—it is ever on the look-out, and, on your first 
entering a field, is on the wing, whirling about above 
your head, and endeavouring by its manoeuvres, to lead 
you from its nest. The late Mr. John Laws, of Heddon 
Laws, in Northumberland, who was an acute observer ot 
the habits of the feathered race, and had always been 
much interested by those of the Peewit, could, from long 
practice, discover when at a distance, by the flight and 
motions of the bird, almost the exact position of its eggs, 
