This familiar songster's nest is placed on the ground, amongst corn or rough tufty grass, and its whereabouts is generally betrayed by the peculiar scudding flight of the hen when disturbed. The nest is built of bents and dry grass, those of the most slender texture being placed inside. The eggs number four or five (I have never found more), the colouring of which is subject to variation, and not of the easiest kind to convey in a written description. However, the following may be taken as representative:—A dirty white ground colour slightly tinged with green, spotted and mottled with umber-brown, generally more thickly towards the larger end.
THE GOLDEN PLOVER.
The favourite nesting-place of the Golden Plover is on the dreary mountain wilds of the North of England, Scotland, and Ireland. She selects a slight natural depression in the earth, and scrapes together bits of dead grass, rushes, and heather for a nest, in which four eggs are deposited, with the sharp points all meeting in the centre. The ground colour of the eggs is stone or cream, spotted and blotched with umber or blackish-brown, of various sizes and shapes.
THE LANDRAIL.
The position selected by the Landrail for her nest is on the ground, amongst grass, underwood, clover, or corn. It is loosely constructed of dry herbage. Her eggs vary greatly in number, from seven, eight, or nine to as many as fifteen, and are of a dingy white, suffused with a reddish tinge, freckled and spotted with red, brown, and purplish-grey.
THE WIGEON.
This bird has been known to breed in Scotland and Ireland, but its favourite places are Scandinavia, Finland, and Northern Russia. The nest is placed in a clump of rushes or a tuft of heather, its materials being reeds and decayed rushes, with a beautiful inner lining of down off the parent bird, which lays from seven to ten creamy-white eggs, of a very oval shape. Broods have been hatched at different times in the Zoological Gardens.