8o IVILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



If a few pairs are breeding you would never know, 

 and in some cases never think it possible for them 

 to be there ; but they cannot keep quiet. Before 

 you are near their nests they come to meet you, 

 yelping their loudest. Then is the time to admire 

 the sober beauty of the Redshank's plumage, as the 

 birds shoot over and around you in strange flights. 

 One curious position is when they hang poised, as 

 it were, for a moment, with the wings bent down, 

 and their red legs straight out under their tails, of 

 course yelping their loudest. 



The Redshanks, like the Lapwing, will visit a 

 favourite breeding haunt even if serious alterations 

 have taken place there — serious as regards the birds 

 — if only a bit is left as it used to be. Only a short 

 time back, on a strip of coarse torey marsh close to 

 the walls of a large dockyard, near the mouth of a 

 tidal river thronged with craft, the Redshanks nested 

 in security through all the sights and sounds which 

 were close to them. They were near their old 

 feeding-grounds, and they could have bred there 

 in perfect security ; but no, they must come close 

 up to the dockyard walls, for reasons known to 

 themselves alone : the same motive, I suppose, that 

 leads the Missel Thrush to leave the woods and 

 build on some solitary tree on a gentleman's lawn. 



That shore-shooters say hard things about this 

 bird is not to be wondered at. Of course it would 

 be simply ridiculous to imply that the birds have 

 any motive for their yelping ; it is, as they say, 

 "the cussed yelper's natur." The bird, in fact, 



