310 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



difficulties. On the open treeless moorlands houses are few and far 

 between, the climate is anything but inviting in early May, rain- 

 storms are frequent, varied by squalls of hail and fogs, while in 

 some seasons heavy snowfalls take place from time to time. On the 

 other hand the country is open, with few hills of any size, and the 

 direction of the birds' flight can be marked for long distances, while 

 further south, though the extent of possible breeding ground is in- 

 finitely smaller, it is far more difficult to follow a bird in flight as it 

 skims over a belt of forest or round a shoulder of a hill. So it is 

 little wonder that of the actual courtship of the greenshank we have 

 hardly anything on record. What little we know may be classified 

 under two heads; the wonderful song flight of the male and the 

 ritual of the courtship itself. The song flight may be seen even after 

 incubation has begun, though possibly only in the earlier stages, and 

 has been noticed by several observers. The fullest and best descrip- 

 tion is that of Mr. J. Walpole Bond (1923), which may be sum- 

 marized as follows: 



When singing, the greenshank rises fairly high— sometimes very high— above 

 the moor and starts by soaring, head to wind, of course. It may then remain 

 soaring, looking very hawklike indeed, while it sings. Or else — and this gen- 

 erally happens — it varies the performance by proceeding in a succession of 

 downward, inverted arcs of good size, though soaring is resumed for a few 

 moments as the summit of each curve is reached. In this case " singing " only 

 takes place on the downward portion of the curve ; on the down curve, too, the 

 wings are sometimes vibrated very rapidly. Sometimes also when the " song " 

 itself is in progress the wings are flicked up and down with measured rhythm. 



The song itself is a musical and moderately fast repeated dis- 

 syllable tew-hoo, a rich note, harmonizing with the desolate sur- 

 roundings in which bird life, except for an occasional meadow pipit, 

 (Antkus pratensis) is often almost entirely absent. Walpole Bond 

 also notes a twanging and metallic chuck, dock, or duk, sometimes 

 heard after each quick tetv-hoo, and questions whether this latter 

 sound is vocal or caused by wings or tail. Personally I have not 

 noticed the latter sound, perhaps because I have generally heard the 

 song at a great height and always at some distance. It should be 

 added that this performance is often kept up for long periods. Gil- 

 roy (1922) mentions a case when it lasted for twenty minutes, and 

 though I have not timed the birds, I have heard it more or less con- 

 tinually for ten or twelve minutes, ending with a precipitate dive 

 earthwards. Of the actual courtship ritual I have seen no published 

 record. The birds arrive on their breeding ground early in April. 

 On an occasion when a heavy snowfall had practically wiped out all 

 early nests on the Caithness-Sutherland moors, I saw two birds on a 

 little sandy spit by the side of a small loch. The male was evidently 

 pressing his attentions on his mate and approached her with high 

 flapping wings, showing the underside almost as the redshank eta, 



