9.
towards the centre, fitted neatly together doubtless
designed to avoid rolling away. They were coloured
aptly to disguise them amongst the background and
would normally escape discovery by being just other
pebbles on the beach.
The other nest, more surprisingly, was found by
Ken White several hundred yards from the pit amongst
rubble and macadam of hard standing of the former
RAP camp that was being temporarily used as a caravan
site for the M11 workers and families. We had
immediate fears for this clutch, (both clutches of
eggs hatched on approx. 20th June) because a cat
lived on the camp nearby. In fact although the eggs
successfully hatched and the chicks were energeti-
cally running about for several weeks, they
disappeared and we presumed the worst.
The family by the pit were successfully raised
and four chicks reached the flying stage and we presume
have successfully flown off and migrated. This was
surprising given the amount of disturbance they
suffered for many weeks, especially during the school
holidays when the pit became an ad hoc swimming pool
(and very nice too!) and the rough surroundings an
adventure playground. Apparently this species can
cope quite well with human presence.
The protective colouration of both eggs and chicks
is highly effective and other protective characteris-
tics include the habit of the chicks to flatten
themselves in a state of death-like immobility. Also
the parent birds very cleverly draw away human
attention by their aerobatic antics and injured bird
stunts and of course by going away from their young.
We had hoped that this was the beginning of a
reasonably permanent colonisation at least for a few
years whilst the specific and suitable environment of
rather bare gravel beds and mud flat remained. We