390 Lieut. C. B. Ticehurst on the [Ibis, 



species ; but, even so, there is likely to be a residuum left, 

 and it must be remembered that a male and a female are not 

 necessarily a pair when it comes to mating, as has often been 

 proved with ducks. 



It has also been suggested that these grey summer birds 

 are birds of a previous year, and that, as they are not 

 going to breed, they retain their winter dress. That they 

 are 7iot 1 have no proof, but I have fully satisfied myself 

 that quite a number of these birds of less than a year old 

 attain as rich a summer dress at their first spring moult 

 as obtains in any adult, for in such birds I have found odd 

 feathers, usually tertials of the juvenile plumage, remaining. 

 On the other hand, some at least of these grey summer birds 

 may be, and probably are, sterile adult birds. These points 

 are of considerable interest, and were fully commented on by 

 Murray Adamson in the seventies and eighties, though they 

 were to him a mystery, as they still are to us at the present 

 day ; and how can it be otherwise, seeing that for the last 

 thirty-seven years it has been illegal to shoot a Grodwit after 

 1 March till August or 1 September, during the very months 

 when specimens, could they be obtained, would do much to 

 clear up the mystery. Such protection is perfectly useless. 

 In spite of rigid protection, the Bar-tailed Godwit (and in 

 the same category I may mention, too, the Sanderling, 

 Knot, Turnstone, &c.) has never bred in Great Britain and 

 never will. It must be remembered that the number of 

 these birds which halt for a few days on our shores during 

 their vernal migration is but a small fraction of the total 

 number of them in the world, and of this small fraction 

 the few which would be shot could make no difference to 

 the welfare of species, or lessen the numbers which would 

 visit us another year; whilst it deprives of legitimate 

 material for enquiry those who make a study of many of the 

 unsolved problems in such birds, and so hinders progress. 

 Indeed, judging by the earlier writings of the past century, 

 more of such birds used to visit us prior to any protection 

 at all than do so at the present time ! 



