396 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



fens. Nowadays there are no fens : consequently no 

 god wits. 1 



The species referred to in these remarks is therefore 

 exclusively the common godwit {Limosa lafiftonica of 

 Linnaeus), generally described as the "bar-tailed" godwit, 

 though the true tail is not always barred — only, indeed, in 

 the young in first plumage and in the breeding adults. In 

 winter, when these godwits are here, the tail (in old and 

 young alike) is uniform ash-grey. The outer rectrices, it 

 is true, exhibit white splashes or indentations on their 

 inner webs : but these are not bars and are invisible 

 unless the feathers are widely opened out. 2 



There exist in the common godwit, four distinct phases 

 of plumage. The young when they arrive here in August, 

 are warm brown and buff in colour, boldly speckled and 

 spotted with lighter shades, and having a strongly-barred 

 tail. The adults (which arrive a month or more later) 

 have already by then acquired their winter-dress of uniform 

 ash-blue, including the tail. But the second stage in the 

 young — that is on the assumption in October of their first 

 winter plumage — is quite distinct, and forms an inter- 

 mediate phase, combining some of both the above 



1 The black-tailed godwit continues to breed in Holland and Denmark, 

 exactly opposite our own coasts. Illustrative of the changes in bird-life 

 caused by drainage and reclamation, may here be mentioned that, during 

 a fortnight's bird-nesting in West Jutland in May 1893, my brother and I 

 found the following marsh-birds breeding : black-tailed godwit, avocet, ruff 

 and reeve, green and wood-sandpipers (neither of these yet laying), Kentish 

 and lesser ringed plovers, great snipe, stork, black tern, spotted crake, 

 pintail, shoveler, garganey, great crested grebe, marsh-harrier, and others. 

 We also observed pelicans, though the record curiously perturbed certain 

 excellent Danish ornithologists, perhaps because they had failed to ascer- 

 tain the fact themselves. (Cf. Ibis, 1894, p. 339, and 1895, p. 294.) 



2 Mr Saunders, in his Manual of British Birds (2nd ed., and the best 

 text-book of all), defines its distribution, and also justifies its popular name 

 by pointing out that the upper-coverts of the tail are always strongly barred. 



