514 SANDPIPERS AND RELATED SPECIES 



grass-tips to save it from detection. The reason of these opposite 

 tactics is difficult to solve. It is not individual, for I have known the 

 same bird or a bird on the same nest behave in both wavs within 



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an hour. I had found a nest, by marking the spot whence the bird 

 rose, while I was one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards away, 

 and returning within an hour with my camera to photograph the nest, 

 found the bird sitting. Her head was pressed low down, so that she 

 was completely covered by the dome of short grass. Although she 

 remained while I erected the camera, I could not get a photograph of 

 her because of the intervening grass-blades, and it was only when 

 I attempted to move some of these that she went off with a most 

 plaintive cry. This bird sat closer than any of which I have had 

 personal experience. There are many records of redshanks behaving 

 as described above, and even allowing themselves to be handled. 

 Cringle, the bird-watcher at Wells, in an account given to Dr. 

 Heatherley, says that one bird was so tame that she allowed him 

 to touch her back, and that he had accidentally trodden on one. 1 

 Mr. H. W. Ford-Lindsay recorded of a redshank whose nest was in an 

 open marsh, that she constantly " sat tight " when the men searching 

 for lapwings' eggs passed close by ; " and it was quite the custom for 

 the ' lookers ' to pick the bird off the nest, see if the eggs were all right, 

 and put her back, when she would brood over them like an old hen." 2 

 Other instances have been given, and I will quote one more only. It 

 appeared in the form of a letter to Country Life, May 28, 1910, from 

 James Vincent, the keeper and bird-watcher at Hickling in Norfolk, 

 an exceedingly good observer of birds' habits. He described finding 

 a "close sitting" redshank on her nest in May 1904. This bird 

 allowed herself to be taken from the nest, not even struggling until 

 held in the hand for a short time. Vincent goes on to say that he 

 Chinks sitting redshanks depend to a certain extent on the lapwings 

 , .nesting. near them to give notice of danger, and that if the lapwings 

 piajfthem false which, Vincent says, they often do in the early part 



1 Zoologist, 1908, p. 369. 2 British Birds (magazine), v. p. 82. 



