48 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



waders is to lie down and watch through a pair 

 of good field-glasses such birds as indicate by their 

 behaviour the presence of a nest. Provided the 

 observer keeps quite still, and does not make any 

 noise calculated to create alarm, half an hour's 

 waiting will generally result in the finding of what 

 is wanted. Another important point about this 

 kind of field - work is when a bird has been 

 watched on to her nest say a quarter of a mile 

 away to make careful mental notes of as many 

 landmarks as possible in a direct hue between the 

 place where the student is situated and the pre- 

 cise spot whereon the nest is located. This very 

 necessary precaution is often overlooked in the 

 excitement of the moment the bird rises directly 

 she sees the observer stir, and before he has 

 covered half the intervening distance the aspect of 

 the ground is changed, and he has hopelessly lost 

 the place. 



When a bird will not come near its nest, or the 

 place where it is suspected to be, it will often 

 betray the whereabouts of its treasure by rush- 

 ing up to drive some winged intruder that has 

 accidentally wandered too near away, and a patient 

 wait is sure to be rewarded. I found a whimbrels 

 nest in the Shetlands last summer in this way. 

 She would not go to it for a considerable while, 

 and just as I began to doubt whether she really 

 had one at all, a Richardson's skua flew nearer to 

 it than she cared to see him venture, and a vicious 



