WANDERINGS OF A NATURALIST 



CHAPTER I 



THE NESTING OF THE GREENSHANK 



THE greenshank is one of the most wary of British 

 birds. Even the curlew is tame in comparison, and the 

 wild and unapproachable golden plover. Thus it is 

 that the photographing of a greenshank at her nest is 

 a difficult feat in bird photography, and calls for a large 

 amount of patience and perseverance. During a recent 

 season a companion and I spent a month in a wild country 

 of bog, heather, and ancient pine forest, where several 

 pairs of greenshank have their home during their nesting. 



Unlike the redshank, which remains in the British Isles 

 throughout the year, the greenshank at the close of summer 

 migrates south, and does not put in an appearance at its 

 nesting haunts until late in March or early in April. It was 

 May 10 when we arrived at the nesting ground. On the high 

 hills the snow still lay unbroken, for the spring was a back- 

 ward one, and the birches were leafless as in midwinter. 



The greenshanks had apparently just commenced to sit, 

 for on the loch side were solitary birds presumably the cocks 

 feeding, and for four days we searched the most likely 

 nesting places from morning to night without success. The 

 weather during this time was cold and very rough, and we 

 had begun to despair of success. But on the afternoon of the 

 I4th, while we were sitting near a loch where all the green- 

 shanks of the district fed, one of them, rising from his dinner, 

 B 



