The little grebe, or dabchick, covers up her eggs even
more completely when she leaves the nest, and often the reedy and sedgy bits lie so naturally that from any distance you might be easily persuaded that the nest is empty. How few other birds adopt this simple device ! The partridge will do so, but only at the later stages of incubation—at least, such is my experience—and not always then. Since crows and jackdaws as well as rats and foxes are continually on the cruise for eggs, one could expect the device to have grown commoner. Perhaps, as our airmen discovered in the War, devices of concealment are more apparent from the aerial point of view than no concealment at all ; and this would certainly be so in regard to any eggs of plovers, tern, or curlew, for example—which are more or less protectively coloured to their environment of sand, pebble or tilth.
W. Basal - Timms&
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