SPRING AND AUTUMN BY THE SHORE 



We sat for a quarter of an hour, until a little ridge 

 of shingle and soft rock lay bare before us. As we ex- 

 pected, the plaintive whistle of some small shore birds 

 fell presently upon our ears, and the flight, settling 

 upon the further part of the ridge, began to feed. A 

 certain youngster sitting at my side, fresh this season 

 to the gun, was now burning to possess a specimen. 

 I do not believe in the least in the indiscriminate 

 slaying of shore birds, or indeed any other kind of 

 feathered creature; but the shooting of a specimen now 

 and again by a lad fond of natural history and anxious 

 to skin and set up his own captures is pardonable 

 enough ; and so the boy picks up the breechloader and 

 walks stealthily towards the birds, now, from their 

 protective colouring, well-nigh invisible upon the patch 

 of shingle. The Schultze cartridge cracks, and a brace 

 of birds reward the ardent collector. These happen to 

 be a dunlin and a ring-plover, charming little shore 

 birds, both familiar residents upon our coasts, and, I 

 am glad to say, common enough upon this particular 

 portion of the Sussex sands. The dunlin is, of course, 

 one of the commonest of our sandpipers. The ring- 

 plover is found as far south as the Cape of Good Hope. 

 Another British bird which, as I have shown elsewhere, 

 migrates to South Africa is the curlew-sandpiper — 

 sometimes known as the pigmy curlew — which I have 

 procured along the same stretch of Sussex shoreland 

 during September. The curlew-sandpiper, which un- 

 doubtedly nests somewhere within the Arctic Circle, 

 enjoyed, with its cousin, the knot, until quite recently, 

 the distinction of never yet having had its eggs dis- 

 covered by naturalists.^ The late Mr. Seebohm and 



^ The knot's nest and eggs have at leng^th been discovered in the 

 valley of the Yenesei. We still, however, lack much information con- 

 cerning' the breeding habits of this and others of this group. 



U 289 



