GREENSHANK. 153 



so Tve knew at once that they must have eggs or young somewhere very 

 close at hand. One of the birds, I think the male, now and then settled 

 on the top of an adjoining hillock, slightly raising his wings, and then 

 giving vent to his feelings, after the manner of the Golden Plover ; 

 whilst his mate kept swooping down on us near the water, repeating 

 her note with great rapidity. After hunting about the banks of the 

 loch for an hour or so, vainly trying to find the nest, the old birds keeping 

 up their excitement all the time, I at last discovered, crouching by the 

 side of a clump of heather, about two feet from the water, two little 

 grey woolly birds, striped above with black like a zebra, with immense 

 long green legs folded up beneath them. On seeing me they began 

 to utter a short plaintive squeak, which soon brought the parent birds 

 within twenty yards of us, the female falling to my walking-stick gun. 

 The male then flew off" to a neighbouring hillock, and, having settled on 

 the top, began to bewail the loss of his mate in his shrillest notes. 

 The birds were extremely wild, though daring ; and during the hour that 

 we took to find the young they only once came within shot. The Green- 

 shank sometimes can be seen hovering in the air, and then again 

 swooping down over the water^ at the least alarm turning sharply round 

 and darting oftV^ 



As soon as the young are fledged the old birds lead them to the 

 adjoining coasts, where they remain until the time of their departure 

 southwards. At this season they obtain their food almost exclusively 

 from the shore, running over the mud-flats and sands, probing them 

 with their long beaks in search of worms and crustaceans. When 

 searching the mud for food, Mr. Harting observed the Greenshank 

 working its bill from side to side. At high water it sometimes visits the 

 pastures near the sea, and often waits on the salt-marshes for the receding 

 of the water. 



In the adult male Greenshank, in breeding-plumage'^, the head is white 

 streaked with black ; the feathers of the mantle, the scapulars, and inner- 

 most secondaries are black, with interrupted grey margins ; but in the 

 course of the summer the grey changes to almost white on the back and 

 scapulars, and is abraded away on the innermost secondaries, leaving them 



* Saiinders has reproduced Yarrell's statement that the summer plumage of the Green- 

 shank is assumed by a ch.iuge in the colour of the feathers and not by a moult. There 

 is no reason to suppose that this bird forms an exception to the rule which governs the 

 changes of plumage in this family. A few feathers are probably retained in spring and 

 may change colour, as is usually the case ; but in the Swinhoe collection is a skin of a 

 Greenshank, dated Hankow, April, in which many primaries of each wing are in full 

 moult, and some of the feathers of the back and a few of the innermost secondaries are still 

 only half-grown. The rarity of early-spring examples of Waders in collections, and the 

 unfortunate propensity of collectors to throw away birds in moult, under the mistaken 

 idea that they are valueless, is probably the cause of this and similai* errors. 



