PIED STILT 27 
sical and fine ladyish—supervene. ‘The end comes 
slowly, surely, a miserable flurry and scraping, 
the dying Stilt, however, even in articulo moriis, 
contriving to avoid inconvenient stones and to 
select a pleasant sandy spot upon which decently 
to expire. When on some shingle bank well 
removed from eggs and nests half a dozen Stilts 
—for they often die in companies—go through 
these performances, agonising and fainting, the 
sight is quaint indeed. 
During the course of their long-drawn-out breed- 
ing season, it is always possible to get a nest with 
eges at the most favourable period for photo- 
graphy—that is to say, within a few days of 
hatching. On my first afternoon such a nest 
was discovered, the hen Stilt sitting, the male 
standing sentinel on the bank above. It con- 
tained the usual quartette of eggs, but was re- 
markable in its strange parsimonious dearth of 
lining. The eggs rested on a single bit of yellow 
bent. This sere short grass stalk was the bird’s first 
care upon each of her home-comings. With shanks 
too long to work it comfortably otherwise, stand- 
ing with one of her thin stilt-like legs angled like a 
half-opened pocket rule, it was marshalled, it was 
set out, it was rearranged. At first I regarded 
the straw as a mere ordinary straw, thousands 
of which lay strewn about the river-bed. Then 
I became impressed—it was impossible not to 
