COMMON EEDSHANK. 211 



cealed that unless their construction is known many 

 might pass unnoticed in a very small space. A hollow 

 is formed in the centre of a tuft of grass, part of 

 which trodden down forms the only lining, whilst 

 the remainder, arching as it were over the top, effec- 

 tually conceals the eggs from view; and as the bird 

 enters and leaves it from the side, and the grasses are 

 either drawn or fall naturally over the openings, the 

 little runs thus made in the surrounding herbage are 

 the only guides to its whereabouts. I have examined 

 several of these singular evidences of instinctive wisdom 

 and have always found four to be the full complement 

 of eggs, laid in a slight hollow with their small ends 

 inwards.* During incubation, and more especially 

 when the young are hatched, the parent birds become 

 even more difficult of approach, and leaving their nests 

 like the lapwings, on the first alarm, fly screaming 

 round the intruder, their anxiety being evinced by 

 strange aerial evolutions. On the 24th of May, 1863, 

 I flushed a pair in some rough marshes, lying parallel 

 with the beachf between Holme and Hunstanton, and 



* A very full and accurate description of the nests and eggs 

 of this species will be found in the "Zoologist" for 1867 (p. 602), 

 forming part of the " Oological Notes from South-east Essex " of 

 Mr. W. Vincent Legge, F.Z.S. 



f Thompson, who in his " Birds of Ireland" has given by far 

 the best account of this species of any British author, states that 

 on some parts of the Irish coast the redshank lays its eggs on the 

 gravelly or shingly beach, like the ringed plover, but I have never 

 heard of any similar instance in this county, although it is possible 

 such may have been the case when they were formerly more abund- 

 ant. By the author of " British Birds in their Haunts " the nest 

 of the redshank is also said to be placed in the marshes by the sea, 

 " under a shrub (popularly known on the coast of Norfolk by the 

 name of ' rosemary'), the Suceda fruticosa, Shrubby Sea Blite of 

 botanists." The same authority, moreover, from his own obser- 

 vations, confirms the statement of a writer in the " Naturalist," as 

 2E2 



