THE GANNET.
This bird seems to prefer just the opposite course to that which most birds adopt in the breeding season, viz., to congregate in thousands, and breed on precipitous rocks, engaging all ledges and shelves capable of holding a nest, which is composed of seaweed and other rubbish picked up by the bird from the ocean, also grass. One egg only is laid, white or bluish-white when first deposited on the nest, but soon becoming dirty and soiled by being trodden upon. Like the Cormorant, this bird's egg is covered with an incrustation of chalk, hiding the colour of the true shell, which is of a greenish or bluish-white.
THE QUAIL.
Green cornfields are generally the situations chosen by the Quail for a nesting-place, where it selects a small depression in the ground, and tramples a few blades of grass or corn down into it, occasionally a few dead leaves. Her eggs number from seven to even as many as twenty, of a pale yellowish-brown, mottled and clouded or blotched with red or olive-brown; variable both in ground colour and markings.
THE OYSTER-CATCHER.
This bird lays its eggs, which number three or four—three being the general rule—on the bare ground, mostly in slight declivities, taking care that they are above high-water-mark. Sometimes a few bents, pebbles, or broken shells are used as a sort of lining. The eggs are stone or cream colour, of a variety of shades, blotched with dark brown, occasionally streaked and spotted with a lighter hue. The markings are variable in character and position, some being pretty equally distributed over the eggs, whilst others are inclined to form a belt round the larger end.