NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



Although the dunlins, golden plovers, and hooded 

 crows have deserted the shore-line this spring, we have 

 some compensation for the loss of their company in 

 the fleeting presence of other wanderers on their way 

 north. No birds in the world make such astonishing 

 migrations as the wading birds, and especially the 

 sandpipers. The ancient, uncontrollable instinct which 

 has impelled their ancestors during countless ages of 

 the past, pushes them north each spring to their breed- 

 ing-places, often far within the Arctic Circle, as regularly 

 as clockwork and as certainly sends them flying far 

 south again for the winter. From the southern shore- 

 line of far South Africa, of South America, and other 

 remote countries, come these restless wanderers on 

 their spring flight, often dropping in on our English 

 shores for a few days' rest before they reach that lone 

 Ultima Thule where they are to find their mates and 

 rear their families. The bar-tailed and black-tailed 

 godwits, the whimbrel, little stint, curlew-sandpiper, 

 common sandpiper, sanderling, nay, even the ruff and 

 reeve, still annually pay our shore-line an occasional 

 spring visit and pass on to those dim and unknown 

 solitudes in which some overpowering impulse compels 

 them to make their nests. 



The quiet observer, spending a few days by some 

 flat stretch of shore-line in springtime, especially if he 

 carries with him a good pair of glasses, may not in- 

 frequently happen upon some of these birds. To-day, 

 for instance, along yonder two miles of sand, have 

 been noted sanderling, sandpipers, little stint, and 

 turnstones, the latter most busily employed in lifting 

 what seem almost incredible weights in search of food. 

 A pair of these birds are often to be found manfully 

 helping one another in some difficult piece of stone- 

 raising. The dainty grey plover, which sometimes 



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