The Greenshank. '^5 



whose cabinets serve no national — and often no absolutely scientific — purpose, 

 cannot content themselves with specimens from localities abroad, where they would 

 hardly be missed, of such eggs and birds as our grand-children may possibly not 

 know as British breeding species at all. The pestilent "British-taken" heresy 

 cannot be too often denounced : it is a heresy because Britain is in no sense a 

 zod- geographical region, or even sub-region. 



Description of adult in summer ( 3 , Yorkshire, May) : bill slightly turned 

 upwards, nearly black, lighter at base ; iris umber ; crown, neck, and sides of face 

 (except a whitish eyebrow) pale grey, with dark shaft-stripes and whitish edges 

 to the feathers ; back and shoulders of the same grey, coarsely and largely blotched 

 with black (in some fine examples almost entirely black) ; wings darker grey- 

 brown, with white shafts to the primaries, and narrow white edges to the shorter 

 primaries and seconaaries ; lower back, rump, and upper tail-coverts white ; tail 

 white, barred with black, except the central pair, which are grey in ground-colour ; 

 throat white; lower neck and chest grey-white, spotted boldly with blackish- grey; 

 sides of breast and flanks barred coarsely with V-shaped marks of the same colour ; 

 rest of under parts white; iris umber; legs and feet yellowish-grey. Length 13 J 

 inches, closed wing 7^. 



The adult in winter (Foochow, 21, 11, '86) has broader white margins to the 

 feathers of the upper parts ; the back has lost nearly all its black, but the scapulars 

 and tertiaries have light grey margins, interrupted by spots and incipient bars of 

 dark sooty-brown ; rump white, but upper tail-coverts barred with dark grey ; 

 under parts white, with a few blackish spots on the lower neck and breast. 



The young in autumn (Northumberland, 1878, etc.) have a rusty tinge to the 

 margins of the feathers of the back, and the chest is clouded with dusky; the 

 central tail feathers are white, not grey, in ground colour; legs greenish- grey, 

 bluer at the joints. Length little over 12 inches, closed wing 7. 



The nestling (Lapland, June 21,) is light grey above, mottled with black, 

 and shewing a brown tinge on the shoulders and lower back ; a bold black stripe 

 from bill to eye, and a deal of black, almost forming a cap, on the crown; 

 under parts dingy white. 



In the Highlands, the Greenshank nearly always nests near the edge of a 

 loch, but in Scandinavia often on bare {i.e., treeless) hillsides, in an open forest 

 at some distance from water. A good account of it in the North is given by 

 Wheelwright (Om. of Lapland, 351-2). The nest is a hollow, usually on bare 

 open ground, and entirely without cover, and is lined with a few leaves or blades 

 of grass. Not uncommonly, however, it seems to select a spot for its nest beside 

 a small boulder, or even between two good-sized stones. The eggs, four in 



