Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/281

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Mauds Landing, thirty-five miles south of here, on May 1st, 1900, the extensive salt-marsh, which is usually a dreary lifeless plain, with little growing on it but numerous samphire-bushes about eighteen inches in height, was covered with water, owing to the excessive rainfall this year—a West Australian "lake," about three miles in length, half a mile wide, and in places three or four feet deep. Great numbers of White-headed Stilts (Himantopus leucocephalus) were breeding; the nests, which were mostly on the small patches of higher ground which formed islands, were merely a slight depression lined with a few samphire-twigs or roots. A few nests were built in the tops of the low bushes just above the surface of the water; these nests, naturally, were more compactly built. The eggs, four in a clutch, varied considerably in colour, some of them having the ground colour deep golden yellow, others quite green, but all with numerous and large black blotches. Fresh eggs were to be found there until Sept. 2nd, the birds having an uneasy time, as some natives visited the spot, and kept robbing the nests. On that date many young were fledged, and I also found young in down, which were difficult to detect, as they squatted flat and kept motionless. One of the islands proved a particularly rich field. It was only about fifty yards long and ten wide, but upon it were about twenty Stilts' nests, four of Red-necked Avocets (Recurvirostra novæ-hollandiæ), two nests of the rare Gull-billed Tern (Gelochelidon anglica), one of the Red-kneed Dotterel (Erythrogonys cinctus), and newly-hatched young of the Red-capped Dotterel (Ægialitis ruficapilla), There was one egg in each of the Gull-billed Terns' nests, though they were hardly worthy of the name of nest, the egg being laid in a slight hollow where the surrounding ground was perfectly bare. In shape they were a long oval, pointed at the small end, of a stone-grey colour, with numerous