The Kentish Plover rears but one brood during the summer, and preparations are made for this towards the end of May. It is not improbable that this Plover pairs for life, seeing that the same localities are visited year by year for nesting purposes. It makes no nest, the eggs being laid in a little hollow amongst the coarser sand or the shingle, or on a drift of dry seaweed and other shore _débris_. The eggs are usually three, but occasionally four in number, and are pale or dark buff in ground colour, blotched, scratched, and spotted with blackish-brown and slate-gray. As is the almost invariable custom with birds breeding on bare plains and beaches—and whose eggs are protectively coloured—the Kentish Plover sits lightly, rises from her eggs as soon as danger is discovered, and evinces but little outward anxiety for their safety; although, in some instances, the feigning of lameness has been resorted to, especially when the eggs have been on the point of hatching. The young birds and their parents form a family party during the autumn, and apparently migrate southwards in close company. With the present species we exhaust the number of Limicoline birds that nest upon the shore in the British Islands. All the other species that make our sands and mud-flats their winter home, or their place of call during their spring and autumn migrations, breed away from the actual beach on marshes and moors and uplands, or do not rear their young at all within our area. Closely associated with most of these birds are the fascinating problems of Migration. We miss the feathered hosts from sand and mud-flat as the spring advances; we note the fleeting appearance of others along the shore bound to far away northern haunts: and then long before the first faint signs of autumn are apparent these migrant birds begin to return, and imbue the wild lone slob-lands and shingles with life. To and fro with each recurring spring and autumn, the stream of avine life flows and ebbs; by day and by night the feathery tides press on, calling forth wonder from the least observant, filling more thoughtful minds with the complexity and the mystery of it all. We have not space to deal here with this grand avine movement; but, content with this passing allusion to it, pass on to a study of the other feathered dwellers by the sea. (Conf. _p._ 281).