FIELD OBSERVATIONS ON 

 BRITISH BIRDS 



r.— ON SOME OF THE COMMONER WADING-BIRDS. 



I 



In drafting what is merely a popular chat about Wading-birds, I 

 have assumed that my readers are entirely ignorant of their appear- 

 ance, their life-history, their changes of plumage, their migration, 

 and indeed their everything. I have little to say that is interesting, 

 nothing that is new, and I have only attempted to awaken an interest 

 in a very beautiful family of birds, which are not as well known as 

 the}' should be. Whether as egg (Golden Plover), nestling (Snipe), 

 young in fust plumage (Redshank), adult in summer, or adult in 

 winter, I do not know any other British family that can approach 

 them in their delicate beauty, or that shoM'S the same extraordinary 

 changes from their breeding- to their work-a-day winter-dress. 



Moreover, it is a group of birds of which I am personally 

 especially fond ; but I have generally found, in showing what I 

 may call an intelligent \-isitor round my collection, that such an 

 one is at home with most of the land birds — Passerines, Owls, Hawks 

 — and has, possibl}^ a passable knowledge of the Ducks and Sea- 

 fowl ; but when he is brought up to the Waders, he commonly 

 confesses his entire ignorance, and classes them all in some special 

 family of his own making, as " Oh, another of those sand-lark 

 things," or remarks " I never can see the difference between these 

 birds ; I call them all Sandpipers." 



From this it will be supposed that my intelligent visitor has had 

 no opportunities of seeing Waders in a wild state, and that these 

 birds are only to be found in some especially favoured spot, like 

 the celebrated Breydon flats at Yarmouth, or the now equally well- 

 known flats between Cley and ^^'ells in Norfolk, and other such 

 places, whose names have become familiar by recurring over and 

 over again in our ornithological books. 



Well, this is not the case. They are to be found, of course in 

 greatly varying numbers, on almost every part of the coast-line of 

 the British Islands, whether it be the rock-bound coast of Connemara, 

 a sandy bav in Orkney, an eastern mud-flat, or a southern 



