April 28, 192 1] 



NATURE 



259 



A Sportsman- Naturalist. 



Field Observations on British Birds. By a Sports- 

 man-Naturalist (the late Dr. F. M. Ogilvie). 

 Edited by Henry Balfour. With foreword by 

 Mrs. J. Massie. Pp. xvi + 228 + vi plates. 

 (London : Selwyn and Blount, 1920.) 255. net. 



THE late Dr. F. M. Ogilvie (1861-1918) was 

 an observer of birds from boyhood, and 

 he enjoyed considerable opportunities on the sea- 

 marshes at Sizewell, in Suffolk, and on his pro- 

 perty of Barcaldine, in Argyllshire, of following 

 his bent. He was by profession an oculist, and 

 in this, as well as in his hobbies of ornithology 

 and orchid-culture, he showed "the vigour of 

 an able man with- the scientific interest, who was 

 steadfast and thorough in all that he took in 

 hand." He published only a few papers, but 

 he delivered eight popular lectures to the Ash- 

 molean Natural History Society of Oxfordshire 

 between the years 1902 and 1916, and these have 

 been edited and put into publishable form by his 

 friend, Mr. Henry Balfour, who has also added 

 judicious footnotes. Naturalists, Mr. Balfour 

 tells us in his preface, will find in these lectures 

 "many shrewd and original remarks, based upon 

 careful observations in the field, by one of the 

 keenest and most cautious of ornithologists." 

 Of the young golden plover Dr. Ogilvie writes : 



"As long as the parents are uttering their alarm 

 note, so long will these little fluffy balls, only 

 hatched perhaps a few hours ago, remain 

 squatted and motionless, with their neeks 

 stretched out, their bodies buried in the golden 

 moss, so that all the lighter underparts, includ- 

 ing the light eye streak, are hidden from view. 

 ... I have myself never found a very young 

 nestling Ringed Plover, though I have often 

 looked for them. I have found them when they 

 are a few^ weeks old, but never directly after 

 they have hatched. I have specimens of them in 

 the latter state, but I obtained them all by hatch- 

 ing eggs out in an incubator. Yet I have con- 

 stantly been over ground where I knew the birds 

 were breeding freely, and where nestlings must 

 have been quite plentiful." 



The invisible young birds are stone-coloured, 

 with black-tipped down. 



On the breeding-ground the redshanks are 

 quite fearless, coming to meet the intruder and 

 sweeping by within a few yards, executing all 

 kinds of fanciful aerial flights. 



"At this season, too, they possess a curious 

 fondness for perching, a habit I have never 

 observed in winter. ... It is a point of some 

 interest how a wading bird, with toes formed 

 as a Redshank's are, is able to perch, and to 

 perch securely, on anything so thin and round 



NO. 2687, VOL. 107] 



as a telegraph wire. Their swaying to and fro 

 is not due to the insecurity of their foothold, for 

 you observe birds that have lighted on a gatepost 

 or barway executing precisely the same move- 

 ments." 



The redshanks make false nests in the second 

 half of March, 



"little depressions scrabbed out on the ground 

 with a few bits of rushes and grass roughly 

 arranged in them. They look like the work of 

 a 'prentice hand — of a Redshank who was lack- 

 ing in experience, and was trying to get his 

 ' hand in ' before taking to the serious work of 

 nest-building. What the meaning or the objects 

 of these false nests is, I have no idea, nor whether 

 both males and females are engaged in making 

 them, or whether it is only the male. Most of 

 our Norfolk and Suffolk gunners hold the latter 

 view; why, I don't know, and call them cocks' 

 nests." 



Now there is little that is new in these observa- 

 tions, but their record reveals directness, sin- 

 cerity, and caution, and if we knew them before 

 we like to see them again through another man's 

 eyes. 



Gannets frequently fly fifty miles or more to 

 their fishing-ground, but in spite of the labour 

 thus involved they collect far more foojd than they 

 require, a fact unpleasantly conspicuous in the 

 colony. 



"Gannets, feeding as they do on surface-swim- 

 ming fish, are dependent for their supply on the 

 weather. If a gale arises, as often happens in 

 an English summer, the fish swim at a greater 

 depth, and beyond the ken of the Gannets' keen 

 eyes." If the gale continues for three or four 

 days, during the whole of that time the bird will 

 catch nothing, and it is possible that the fear of 

 such a catastrophe occurring is at the root of the 

 habit, and that the bird's instinct teaches him 

 always to keep a day or two's supplies in hand, 

 as long as he is able to do so." 



This is not exactly how the theory would be 

 stated by one versed in modern comparative 

 psychology, but the suggestion is a sound one, 

 for though normally a victorious bird, the gannet 

 is, like most other pelagic sea-fowl, in a sad 

 plight when stormy weather lasts for two or three 

 days. 



"The Shag's — and, indeed, all the Cormorants' 

 — method of diving is absolutely characteristic. 

 He really springs right out of the water, turns 

 over in the air, and takes a noiseless header; but 

 the body is so close to the water throughout this 

 manoeuvre, and the action is so quick, easy and 

 free of effort, that one hardly follows the middle 

 stage where the body of the bird is really out of 

 the water altogether, the moment when his paddles 

 are just leaving the water with his kick off, and 



