38 THE BIRD WATCHER 
Oyster-catchers—or sea-pies, to give them their old 
name, which is a very much better one—seem some- 
what sleepy birds, unless it be that in the Shetlands 
birds sleep more in the daytime and less at night 
than farther south. Sleep, I think, it may be called, 
taking the attitude and the complete quiescence into 
consideration. Yet the red eye is always open, seem- 
ing—for you see but one—to wake singly, keeping 
guard over the rest of the slumbering commonwealth 
to which it belongs. But there is another eye, and 
that, no doubt, is open too. A pair of these quaint 
birds will often rest thus, side by side, upon the rocks, 
and another, seeing them as he comes flying along the 
dividing-line of shore and sea, will wheel inwards, and, 
settling beside them, be a lotus-eater too. 
