MORE WADERS 79 



are so far as human life is concerned, but teeming 

 in the short breeding season with bird Hfe of many 

 kinds. 



It is not pleasant work exploring soft places in 

 the season in order to look at the nesting arrange- 

 ments of waders, for the insect life that is there in 

 clouds, forming the principal part of their food, will 

 bite you horribly, the midges worst of all ; but such 

 matters have to be endured somehow. There is one 

 comfort, and that is, when one has made remarks of 

 a forcible but vague nature about midges, no one 

 has been within a mile or two, so they have gone 

 unrecorded. 



The Redshank is also called the Red-legged 

 Horseman, Pool Snipe, Red-legged Snipe, Sand- 

 cock, Teuke, and Yelper, and these are only some 

 of the names that the bird is known by. The nest, 

 placed on a tuft or in a tussock, is only a slight 

 hollow, lined with a few blades of swamp vegetation ; 

 and the eggs, four in number, are pale greenish- 

 grey in ground-colour, blotched and spotted with 

 blackish-brown and reddish-brown. The difference 

 in the two states of plumage is very slight ; in the 

 breeding season the dark parts are deeper in tone 

 and more glossy, and the slender markings on the 

 sides are more defined. 



The Yelper he is called with us, and well does 

 the bird deserve his name. Not that he is so par- 

 ticularly shy, for the very fact of his being seen and 

 heard so frequently puts that on one side ; but yelp 

 he does, and as a rule the bird yelps out of gun-shot. 



