MORE WADERS 79 



are so far as human life is concerned, but teeming 

 in the short breeding season with bird Hfe of many- 

 kinds. 



It is not pleasant work exploring soft places in 

 the season in order to look at the nesting arrange- 

 ments of waders, for the insect life that is there in 

 clouds, forming the principal part of their food, will 

 bite you horribly, the midges worst of all ; but such 

 matters have to be endured somehow. There is one 

 comfort, and that is, when one has made remarks of 

 a forcible but vague nature about midges, no one 

 has been within a mile or two, so they have gone 

 unrecorded. 



The Redshank is also called the Red-leg-Qfcd 

 Horseman, Pool Snipe, Red-legged Snipe, Sand- 

 cock, Teuke, and Yelper, and these are only some 

 of the names that the bird is known by. The nest, 

 placed on a tuft or in a tussock, is only a slight 

 hollow, lined with a few blades of swamp vegetation ; 

 and the eggs, four in number, are pale greenish- 

 grey in ground-colour, blotched and spotted with 

 blackish-brown and reddish-brown. The difference 

 in the two states of plumage is very slight ; in the 

 breeding season the dark parts are deeper in tone 

 and more glossy, and the slender markings on the 

 sides are more defined. 



The Yelper he is called Vv-ith us, and well does 

 the bird deserve his name. Not that he is so par- 

 ticularly shy, for the very fact of his being seen and 

 heard so frequently puts that on one side ; but yelp 

 he docs, and as a rule the bird yelps out of gun-shot. 



