COMMON REDSHANK. 211 
cealed that unless their construction is known many 
might pass unnoticed in a very small space. <A hollow 
is formed in the centre of a tuft of grass, part of 
which trodden down forms the only lining, whilst 
the remainder, arching as it were over the top, effec- 
tually conceals the eggs from view; and as the bird 
enters and leaves it from the side, and the grasses are 
either drawn or fall naturally over the openings, the 
little runs thus made in the surrounding herbage are 
the only guides to its whereabouts. I have examined 
several of these singular evidences of instinctive wisdom 
and have always found four to be the full complement 
of eggs, laid in a slight hollow with their small ends 
inwards.* During incubation, and more especially 
when the young are hatched, the parent birds become 
even more difficult of approach, and leaving their nests 
like the lapwings, on the first alarm, fly screaming 
round the intruder, their anxiety being evinced by 
strange aerial evolutions. On the 24th of May, 1863, 
I flushed a pair in some rough marshes, lying parallel 
with the beacht between Holme and Hunstanton, and 
* A very full and accurate description of the nests and eggs 
of this species will be found in the ‘“ Zoologist” for 1867 (p. 602), 
forming part of the “ Oological Notes from South-east Essex” of 
Mr. W. Vincent Legge, F.Z.S. 
+ Thompson, who in his “ Birds of Ireland” has given by far 
the best account of this species of any British author, states that 
on some parts of the Irish coast the redshank lays its eggs on the 
gravelly or shingly beach, like the ringed plover, but I have never 
heard of any similar instance in this county, although it is possible 
such may have been the case when they were formerly more abund- 
ant. By the author of “ British Birds in their Haunts” the nest 
of the redshank is also said to be placed in the marshes by the sea, 
“under a shrub (popularly known on the coast of Norfolk by the 
name of ‘rosemary’), the Suceda fruticosa, Shrubby Sea Blite of 
botanists.” The same authority, moreover, from his own obser- 
vations, confirms the statement of a writer in the “ Naturalist,” as 
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