Note 36 — NOTES[H] ON CERTAIN BIRDS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

The Ring Plover is evidently the bird here referred to, but I have never known the name of Ringlestone applied to this species in Norfolk, nor have I met with it elsewhere. The Eryngo is now no longer an article of commerce, and its diggers are extinct, but not their tradition as to the position in which the eggs of this bird are said to be placed—a "vulgar error" which does not accord with the writer's experience. When the full complement of four eggs is laid, they are arranged with their pointed ends towards the centre of the nest, which is a slight hollow in the soil. The concavity of the nest therefore, as well as the disproportionate size of the larger end, gives the eggs somewhat the appearance of being placed in the position referred to, but the small end of the egg is always visible, Sir Thomas Browne does not seem to have been aware of the remarkable fact of this essentially marine bird habitually nesting on the sandy warrens about Thetford in the south-west of Norfolk, far from the sea, which it still does, though in reduced numbers, and is there known as the Stone-hatch, from its habit of paving its nest with small stones.