BEDSHANK. 
149 
These birds sometimes perch on trees. They can swim 
well if necessitated to do so. In winter they assemble in 
flocks, often from a dozen to fifty, and upwards from one 
hundred and fifty to two hundred, and are then difficult to 
approach, being always on the look-out and ready to take 
wing on the slightest alarm. If disturbed while the young 
are yet unable to fly, they are very vociferous, wheeling 
about an intruder with a slow quivering flight, and frequently 
stooping close down, as if to buffet him, whistling shrilly 
while doing so, with their red legs stretched out behind, or 
drooping, as if languidly, under them. Indeed at any time, 
especially if approached unawares, they utter a wild scream 
of alarm, more or less loud, which, if not intended, is yet 
taken as a signal by other birds about. 
They feed on grasshoppers, beetles, marine insects, and 
worms, and in search of these bore with their bills in the 
mud and sand, jumping up and so pressing them in by the 
weight of their bodies. They likewise eat portions of weeds 
and mosses. • 
The call-note of the Redshank is only a ffigse, dgse,’ or 
diddle, liddle.’ 
The nest, of a little coarse grass, is made by the marshy 
margins of lakes and other uncultivated watery places, on a heap 
of flags, or in some slight depression, or sheltered by a bush 
or tuft of herbage, as also, it is said, occasionally on heaths. 
The eggs, deposited early in May, are pale reddish white, 
tinged with green, and blotted, spotted, and speckled with 
dark red brown, most at the larger end; some varieties with 
bluish grey. They are four in number. The young are 
hatched in from fourteen to sixteen days, and immediately 
quit the nest, under the tutelage of the female bird, the 
male taking no care of them; they are soon fledged, and 
able to provide for themselves. 
Male; weight, about five ounces, or five and a half; length, 
nearly eleven inches; bill, in winter brownish black at the 
point, dark red at the inner part: from its base a dusky 
streak runs to and over the eye. Iris, dusky brown; over it 
from the bill is a white streak above the dusky one. Head 
on the sides, white; in winter greyish white, with narrow 
brown shafts; on the crown and the neck on the back greyish 
brown, with olive reflections; in winter greyish brown, with 
darker shaft streaks; neck in front, white; in spring spotted 
and streaked with greyish or brownish black, with olive 
