Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/264

236 days, you will then yourself experience the treatment your dog lately met with. They have frequently come so close to me when among their haunts at such a time, that had I extended my arm ( and they had not on that account deviated from their flight) I could have seized them with my hand. They will even settle on the ground within a few paces of you, exclaiming pitifully all the time you remain among them. The cause of this change in their manner is, I imagine, that now their young have been hatched, and they seek, by exposure of themselves, to take off your attention from the nestlings. I have never been fortunate enough to find the young, though I have more than once engaged in the search, and been assisted by a dog which had some dexterity in finding their nests. The word nest, by the way, is almost a compliment, for it is often nothing more than a slight depression in the earth, on one of the highest parts of the salterns. The eggs are however occasionally washed away notwithstanding this precaution. T have found several nests in the midst of grass and other herbage; these resembled very much, though of course much smaller, the seat rabbits make for themselves in a meadow drain or the coarse grass close under a hedge; and the bird when sitting must be almost completely concealed: but they are frequently quite open, and with hardly a blade of grass near them, and the most elaborate have only a few withered stalks laid in the bottom. I have never found more than four eggs, nor less than two: the former number I take to be the usual one. They are large in proportion to the size of the bird, and placed in the nest without much regard to symmetry of figure.

Early in August, the hatch having been some time over, and the young birds acquired some power of flight, they may be and are shot in considerable numbers, as they are then more easily got at,—the young probably from want of power to take long flights, and the old from being unwilling to leave their offspring. They are sometimes prepared for the table, and are by some thought good eating. I have heard the preference given to them over a snipe, but this was before the snipe had come to its perfection, viz. the middle of September.

About the end of August and September I have seen them in very large flocks, consisting of some hundreds probably, sitting at the edge of the smaller creeks waiting for the recession of the water. It was quite out of the question to get near them on such occasions, as every pair of eyes was at liberty to watch the approach of the visitor. The notes uttered by the birds when thus assembled are totally different from those they emit at any other time. Most persons arc fa-