THE WADERS 



445 



With this sole and remarkable exception, 

 all Plovers and Sandpipers make a more 

 or less cosy nest on the ground ; and all 

 lay four eggs to the clutch, which are 

 protectively coloured as to their shells 

 in various shades of buff, ohve, and grey, 

 blotched and streaked with 

 black or rich brown. All 

 are pyriform in shape — large 

 compared with the size of 

 the parent bird — and always 

 placed in the nest with the 

 smaller ends meeting to- 

 gether, so that the birds 

 may more easily cover them. 

 Photography has proved 

 that, in several species at 

 any rate, both sexes take 

 turns in incubating. x\t the 

 breeding season the Common 

 Sandpiper resorts to the 

 near neighbourhood of in- 

 land streams. It breeds in 

 several counties of the 

 United Kingdom, but chiefly 

 in the north, and makes its 

 nest at no great distance 

 from the water. At such 

 times it becomes especially 

 tame, and the pecuhar habit 

 of head bobbing and tail 

 jerking may then easily be 

 watched, the hovering love- 

 flight observed, and the 

 plaintive tremulous " wheat- 

 wheat " call heard. 



Although the frequency 

 \\-ith which the wily Wood- 

 cock appears in the game- 

 dealers' shops greatly de- 

 pends upon wind and 

 weather, and the number of 

 migrants from abroad, there 

 is scarcelv a county in 

 which a pair or two of 

 sought-after bird do not 

 breed after the overlapping northern 

 strangers have departed in early spring. 

 As they are night feeders, however. 

 Woodcock are seldom seen on the wing, 

 except when flushed from their secluded 

 resting-places by sportsmen, or when 

 taking their evening love-flight during 

 At this season they may, per- 

 be met with chasing one another 

 the outskirts of wood or coppice. 



uttering meanwhile their peculiar toad- 

 like croaking note. In October, when 

 the chief of the migrants reach our 

 eastern coast-line. Woodcocks may now 

 and then be found in unexpected places — 

 on the bare chffs or sand-dunes, in open 



England in 

 this much- 

 remain to 



April. 



chance, 



around 



WHIMBREL'S NEST AND EGGS. 



fields or by roadside fences — tired out 

 by their sea passage. Under such cir- 

 cumstances they are often attracted by 

 less powerful rays than those emanating 

 from our hghthouses and lightships ; 

 the open door of a blacksmith's forge 

 and the open window of a cottage have, 

 to my knowledge. pro\'ed destructively 

 alluring to more than one weary Wood- 

 cock. Besides the most beautifully har- 

 monious blending of various shades of 

 red and grey, black and brown of the bird's 

 plumage — which so closely assimilates 



57 



