REDSHANK AND GREENSHANK 509 



remarkably swift in flight, and on first rising go off in a crooked or 

 zigzag line like the snipe. Both are good swimmers, taking to water 

 voluntarily, and also diving on occasion to escape when wounded. 



REDSHANK AND GREENSHANK 



[W. FARREN] 



Both the redshank and greenshank breed in the British Isles. 

 The former is one of the commonest and most familiar of our nesting 

 Waders, whilst the latter is one of the rarer, nesting only in the 

 northern counties of Scotland. The nesting of the greenshank was 

 first recorded by Macgillivray, who found a nest on Harris in the 

 Western Isles. 1 This was previous to 1835. Messrs. Harvie-Brown 

 and Buckley, in their Fauna of the Outer Hebrides (1871), describe the 

 greenshank as decidedly rare, and only to be met with for certainty 

 in Lewis and Harris. Mr. Harvie-Brown considers that its breeding 

 range on the mainland has increased, and states that it extends as far 

 south as Argyll and North Perthshire. To the rest of Great Britain 

 and Ireland it is a bird of spring and autumn passage, and to a limited 

 extent a winter visitor to certain parts of the coast, chiefly on the 

 west and south-west and in Ireland. 



The spring passage of the greenshank commences very early in 

 the year. The birds may generally be seen on their nesting-grounds 

 in Scotland by the middle of April, and they have been recorded as 

 early as the llth of that month. 2 I have seen several pairs on loch- 

 sides in the vicinity of the nesting-grounds on April 26. An increase 

 in the number of birds that have wintered at Poole, Dorsetshire, has 

 been noticed as early as February 12, 1910, 3 but whether as the 

 result of overseas migration is not certain. Migration continues 



1 Macgillivray's British Birds, iv. p. 322. 



2 H. A. Macpherson, Field, 1890, vol. Ixxvi. p. 404. 



3 B. O. C. Migration Report, 1911, xxviii. p. 178. 



VOL. III. 3 U 



