32 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



orange legs in conspicuously pied and tortoiseshell 

 livery, investigating the seaweed and turning the pebbles 

 over, do not go and do likewise. The reason, perhaps, is 

 that the .flats so swarm with minute amphipod and 

 mollusc life that there is no serious competition or need 

 to take the bread out of the turnstone's mouth. Last 

 of all comes the little stint, a demure elf of a bird no 

 bigger than a chaffinch, who seemed to me more like 

 a miniature sanderling than dunlin, as he is commonly 

 called. Very self-possessed was he (there were only a 

 few) in his six-inch body, cloaked in ashy-brown, with 

 the miles of lone, level, immemorial wastes around him. 

 I saw no golden plover, nor oyster-catchers, supposed to 

 frequent the coast in large numbers. 



At first it seemed to me that these different species 

 of shore bird, though on the best of terms, did not mix 

 to any great extent. But this was a false impression, 

 and a marked characteristic of the waders is their gentle 

 sociability. Sanderling and ringed plover were con- 

 stantly together, and twice I saw little stint among them. 

 Curlew fed both with greenshank and redshank, and 

 turnstones associated with dunlin and sanderling. Nor 

 was it altogether foolish to feel pleasure at my correction, 

 since the uniformity of habit, residence, shape, colour, 

 language, and character makes the birds a single com- 

 munity, and any tendency to exclusiveness would have 

 marred the fitness of things. Birds were the first animals 

 to develop sympathy, and here it was pictured in the 

 art of nature as well as represented in character. 



But this by no means implies the capitalist's nightmare 

 of Socialism, and I came to see that differentiations in 

 character were none the less present for being subtle 

 and hard to unravel. Apart from the marked person- 

 alities of curlew, dunlin, and turnstone, for instance, the 

 ringed plover draws away quite definitely, if not too 

 far, from the other members of the wading family to 

 introduce an alien presence. The differences of physical 

 type (shorter bill and dumpier body) are but the externals. 

 Not only is he the least shy of the group, and his wistful 

 toolee, toolee, one of the most expressive and frequent 

 cries, but his actions on the ground are not the same 



