194 HILL BIRDS OF SCOTLAND 



who knows this idiosyncrasy, the nest is not so difficult 

 to discover as would be the case otherwise. Should tree 

 stumps or fallen branches be absent, the Greenshank 

 makes its nest against a stone, but this is the exception 

 in the nesting grounds which I know. 



Like some other " waders," the Greenshank is in the 

 habit of making several false nests or " scrapes " in the 

 vicinity of the true nest, and it may be that these are 

 formed by the male bird in the course of his display. The 

 nest is a slight depression neatly made and of no great 

 depth. At times it is lined with pieces of bark pulled by 

 the Greenshank from the branch against which the nest 

 is placed, or a few blades of grass or pieces of lichen are 

 utilised. 



The eggs are usually four in number, but I am informed 

 by a stalker that he once found a clutch of five. They 

 are handsome and quite characteristic. The ground 

 colour is usually of a pale buff, and the eggs are thickly 

 marked with a distinctive shade of dark brown. The 

 underlying shell-marks are more apparent than is the case 

 with the eggs of any " wader " I know. The behaviour 

 of the bird during the time she is brooding varies greatly. 

 At times it is possible to approach to within a few feet 

 of the nest without causing her to leave, or she may be so 

 wary as to rise from her eggs before it is possible to mark 

 her departure. The Greenshank, as I mentioned earlier, 

 usually chooses as a nesting site a piece of moor recently 

 burnt — she never rests amongst full-grown heather — and 

 so it is not easy to approach her unobserved. 



Though so wary and suspicious a bird, she sometimes 

 nests in the vicinity of houses. The stalker of a certain 

 Inverness-shire forest showed me in 1914 a Greenshank's 

 nest within five minutes' walk of his home. On May 21st 

 the last egg was laid, and the bird commenced to brood, 

 but owing, perhaps, to the fact that a pair of Curlew had 



