2 SCOLOPACID^. 



have heard both species should easily recognise either bird by the note alone. 

 When flying overhead, or at some distance from the ground, the note is slow and 

 clear ; but when in the act of alighting, with the wings raised over its head, it 

 repeats the note with great rapidity, the syllables running into one another. This 

 is accompanied by a tremulous motion of the wings, very similar to what may be 

 observed in the Common Sandpipers, or in the Curlews soon after their arrival in 

 spring. The flight is rapid, though the strokes of the pinions are in slow, strong, 

 regular beats, which appear to keep time with each syllable of the note. The 

 mark by which a Greenshank is most easily recognisable, independent of its note, 

 and mode of flight, and size, when rising from a loch-side or marsh, is the 

 conspicuous white patch of feathers on the rump. It has, moreover, some 

 resemblance, on the wing, to the Bar- tailed Godwit, though smaller, and is 

 midway in size between that species and the Redshank. 



" The es£S are difiicult to find, and often the bird has to be watched to the 

 nest. I have obtained a good many of their eggs from difierent localities, and am 

 inclined to think that those having a pale green ground, with small distinct 

 blotches, represent the type ; though others, some of which I possess, have a darker 

 ground-colour, with bold rich-brown and purplish blotches, confluent at the larger 

 end. The Greenshank begins to lay about the 10th May in Sutherland, though 

 in other counties some observers consider it amongst the earliest breeders of the 

 Orallce. I have one laying taken on the 10th May, but of many others received, 

 very few complete sets have been taken so early in the season." 



Mr. T. E. Buckley has published the following notes on the breeding of the 

 Greenshank in the east of Sutherland * : — " This fine and interesting wader is 

 fairly distributed through the east of the county, but is nowhere common. Its 

 eo-cs are difficult to find, and are a prize when found. I knew of four or five 

 pairs breeding in the district about Balnacoil, but only succeeded in getting one 

 nest, which a shepherd found for me. Sometimes these birds sit very close on 

 their nests. In 1869, at Altnaharra, I took a nest which was placed between two 

 stones at the edge of a loch. Passing by the same place, when fishing, in 1871, 

 I happened to think of the Greenshank, and there, between the same two stones, 

 sat the old bird on her nest, and she allowed me to touch lier with my fishing-rod 

 before she went off. The first time I took the nest it only contained three eggs, 

 two hard-set and the other addled, the date being the 24th of May ; the second 

 time the nest contained four nearly fresh eggs, and was taken on the 26th of May. 

 When the young are hatched the old birds are very bold and vociferous, coming 



* 'Proceedings o£ the Natural nistory Society of Glasgow,' vol. v. part i. p. 144. 



