Part 30
The redshank, although not so numerous as formerly, is still a fairly common bird of the tidal flats and saltings on the east coast of England, and, in smaller numbers, in all suitable localities in Great Britain and Ireland. It is resident throughout the year, but is most plentiful in autumn and winter, at which time its numbers are increased by the arrival of migrants from northern Europe. Its food consists of marine worms, insects, and small crustaceans, and when its feeding-grounds are covered at flood-tide, it may be seen in close flocks on the small, dry areas, waiting for the water to subside. When thus congregated the birds are very loquacious, keeping up a perpetual confused sound of many voices, which has been compared to the chirruping concert of a flock of house-sparrows before settling down to roost of an evening. When the tide goes out the flocks break up, and the birds scatter in all directions to feed. The redshank begins to breed about the end of May, in fens and inland marshes, and on the saltings, out of reach of the tide.
The nest is a slight depression in the ground, with a few dried bents and grass-blades for lining, or with no lining at all, and is in some cases quite exposed; but it is more often placed among coarse grass, or in the centre of a tussock, which conceals it from view. Four eggs are laid, of a yellowish grey ground-colour, blotched and spotted with purplish brown. When its breeding-haunts are approached the bird displays the greatest excitement, and flies circling about high above the intruder’s head; and at such times a peculiar manner of flight, common to all the species of the genus Totanus, becomes very marked. The flight is slow and somewhat wavering, with an occasional downward stroke of the wings, which are much depressed, as of a duck about to drop on to the water. While flying in this way it clamours loudly, making the marsh ring with its shrill, piercing pipe, and at times dashes down close to the intruder’s head, as if to intimidate him; and if there should be young, or eggs about to hatch, it drops on to the ground, and flutters along the surface like a wounded bird, in order to draw the danger away. Most birds in the order which includes the sandpipers, snipes, and plovers, make use of this device when their young are in danger.
At all times the redshank is a vigilant and clamorous bird, and as the meaning of its ringing alarm-note is understood by all waders and waterfowl, it is heartily detested by the gunners on the sea-coast.
Greenshank.
Totanus canescens.
Head and neck greyish white streaked with blackish brown; mantle and secondaries nearly black; rump and tail-feathers white, the latter mottled and barred with dusky brown; under parts white, streaked and spotted with ash-brown; legs and feet olive-green. Length, fourteen inches. In the winter plumage the upper parts are greyer and the under parts pure white.
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The greenshank is an annual visitor during the spring and autumn migrations to the coasts and inland waters of Great Britain and Ireland; but it comes in small numbers. It has long been known that a number of pairs remain annually to breed in Scotland, and, according to Mr. Harvie-Brown, its breeding-range is extending in that country. Macgillivray wrote of this species: ‘Its habits are very similar to those of the redshank, with which it associates in autumn. It is extremely shy and vigilant.... Many individuals remain during the summer, when they are to be found by the lakes in the interior.... At that season it is easily discovered, for when you are, perhaps, more than a quarter of a mile distant, it rises into the air with clamorous cries, alarming all the birds in its neighbourhood, flies round the place of its nest, now wheeling off to a distance, again advancing towards you, and at intervals alighting by the edge of the lake, where it continues its cries, vibrating its body all the while.’
The nest is often placed at some distance from the water. The four eggs are of a warm stone-colour, spotted with brown and blotched with purplish grey.
Whimbrel.
Numenius phæopus.
Crown dark brown, with broad pale streak down the middle; upper parts like the curlew, but darker; axillaries white barred with brown. Length of female, eighteen inches.
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If it were our belief that the happiness of birds consisted in the degree of interest they, as species, excite in us, it could be said that the whimbrel suffers from his resemblance to the curlew. He is in form and colouring a lesser curlew with a less strongly marked individuality; ‘half-curlew’ and ‘jack-curlew,’ his two vernacular names, really imply that he is only half as attractive as the bigger bird. With us he is best known as an autumn and spring visitor, breeding only in the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The migration eastwards begins at the end of July, and the birds continue to pass until September, flying rapidly and at a great height. Of the flocks that alight to rest and feed on our coasts, a few birds remain through the winter. The return migration begins in April, but the greatest number of the migrants appear on our coasts about the beginning of May. On account of their punctuality, the whimbrel is known in some districts as the ‘May bird.’ In language and habits they resemble curlews, but have shriller voices, a more rapid flight, are not so excessively shy, and do not confine themselves so exclusively to the sand-flats when feeding. Grass-grown saltings, low meadows, and pasture-lands in the neighbourhood of the sea are visited by them. The nest is placed on moors and heaths not far removed from the shore. A slight hollow among the heather or coarse grass is lined with dead stems and leaves, and four eggs are laid, in colour like those of the curlew, but differing in size. During the breeding season the whimbrels are extremely pugnacious, and attack the skuas, lesser black-backed gulls, and other egg-stealing species, and chase them from their nesting-ground with shrill, angry cries.
Common Curlew.
Numenius arquata.
General plumage reddish ash mottled with dusky spots; belly nearly white, with dusky streaks; rump and tail-coverts white; tail-feathers barred with dark brown. Length of the female, which is the larger, twenty-one to twenty-six inches.
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The curlew is the largest of its order in the British Islands; even the large woodcock looks small besides him, and among diminutive stints and sandpipers he is a veritable giant. An imperfect ibis in figure, in a pale sandy brown dress with dusky mottlings, he is, perhaps, the least handsome of the Limicolæ; in character he is one of the most interesting. What marvellously keen senses, what unfailing wariness and alertness must this large, inland-breeding species possess to keep its hold on existence in so many localities in this populous country in spite of incessant persecution! Most vigilant of birds, he is not vigilant on his own account only. He is the unsleeping sentinel of all the wild creatures that are pursued by man, warning them of danger with piercing cries that none fail to understand. The redshank, greenshank, and many other species, in this and other orders, are equally vociferous in the presence of danger, and their warnings are as promptly obeyed by all wild creatures that live with or near them; but a curious feature about the curlew is that he appears to take an intelligent interest in the welfare of beings not of his own species, and that he is distressed if they fail to act on his signal. In Yarrell’s ‘British Birds’ (4th edit. vol. iii.) Howard Saunders gives a striking instance of this characteristic. He describes seeing one of these birds, ‘after shrieking wildly over the head of a sleeping seal, swoop down, and apparently flick with its wings the unsuspecting animal, upon which the stalker was just raising his rifle.’ This, to my mind, is a far more wonderful instance of the help-giving instinct in the lower animals than that related by Edwards of Banff, in which a number of terns swooped down upon one of their number which he had wounded and was pursuing, and, taking its wings in their beaks, raised it, and bore it away out to sea beyond his reach. The case of the curlew reminds us rather of the action of the rhinoceros-bird in waking the rhinoceros on the appearance of an enemy; but between curlew and seal there is no such thing as commensalism, and no tie, excepting the common knowledge that they are living creatures, and must fly for life at the approach of man, their deadliest enemy, on account of his superior cunning and his power to slay them at long distances.
During a greater part of the year the curlew is a shore-bird, seeking its food on the sand-flats which become covered at high water. When the tide overflows the flats the birds go inland, often to a distance of several miles from the sea, and wait there until the tide turns. They appear to know just when this occurs, however far from the shore they may be, and, rising and calling to each other, set out on their return, to arrive at the exact time when feeding may begin. It is during these journeys to and fro between the sea and the moors that the curlew looks at his best when, seen at a moderate distance, he passes in small flocks, disposed in the form of a wedge, or letter V, his sharp-pointed wings and long, ibis-like beak clearly outlined against the blue sky. To most lovers of nature and wild bird life the voice of the curlew is his principal attraction. He is very loquacious, and his ordinary cry of two notes, from which he takes his name, is singularly clear, far-reaching, and wild in character. His night cries have given rise to some curious and gloomy superstitions in Scotland, where the curlew is called ‘whaup.’ According to Yarrell, the bird is a ‘long-nebbit thing,’ from which the Highlander prays to be delivered, classing it with ‘witches and warlocks.’ In the same work we read: ‘Saxby says that the Shetlanders regard with horror the very idea of using so uncanny a bird as food; in fact, a visitor who did so was afterwards alluded to, almost in a whisper, as “the man that ate the whaup.”’ Long may the ‘long-nebbit things’ continue to exist, to delight and invigorate us with their wild voices!
In spring--early in April as a rule--the curlews begin to forsake their feeding-grounds on the sandbanks and go inland to breed; but some unpaired or non-breeding birds remain through the summer by the sea. Wild extensive moors are its favourite summer haunts. ‘Its breeding-range,’ Seebohm says, ‘is similar to that of the red grouse and ring-ouzel.’ Its nesting-place, as a rule, is on the flat and boggy parts of the moor, and the nest is not unfrequently placed among reeds or rushes. The three or four eggs are olive-green, blotched and spotted with dark brown and dusky green. The young birds when hatched have short, straight, plover-like bills.
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The family Scolopacidæ, which comprises the phalaropes, avocet, snipes, sandpipers, godwits, the curlew, and whimbrel, numbers thirty-four (so-called) British species. Eighteen have been fully described, including the ruff, now extinct as a breeder, and fallen to the position of a mere straggler in this country. The ruff is one of three interesting and handsome species in this family of birds which have been extirpated in England during the present century. Another is the avocet (_Recurvirostra avocetta_), a singular wader, conspicuous and beautiful in black and white plumage, with a long bill, curved upwards. It bred in large numbers in fens and marshes in the eastern countries; but since about 1825, when it finally ceased to visit its old haunts in summer, it has been known only as a rare straggler. The third extirpated species is the fine black-tailed godwit (_Limosa melanura_), which bred annually in Norfolk and the neighbouring county until about 1835. It is now a visitor on migration, in very small numbers, to the east coast. The bar-tailed godwit, which has never bred in the British Islands, also appears occasionally in small numbers during migration. It breeds in northern Europe. The black-winged stilt, which resembles the avocet in its black and white dress, but has longer legs and a straight bill, is a rare straggler from southern Europe. Of several species of sandpipers that appear as stragglers on our coasts during migration, there are two that have some claim to be regarded as British species. One is the wood-sandpiper (_Totanus glareola_), which comes nearest to the green sandpiper in size, colour, and general appearance. It appears on the east and south coasts in autumn, in small flocks composed of young birds. The wood-sandpiper is known to have bred on one occasion in this country--at Prestwich Car, in Northumberland, in 1853. The second species is the spotted redshank, a rare and irregular visitor during migration, chiefly to the eastern counties. Its winter plumage is ash-grey above and white beneath; in summer it differs from all other sandpipers in its dark hue, the general colour being sooty black, the upper parts studded with triangular spots of pure white. It breeds in northern Europe in wooded situations, and is partial to burnt grounds, where its dark plumage assimilates in colour to the charred wood and blackened earth. Like the redshank, it is, when breeding, exceedingly vigilant and noisy when approached.
Eight species, all rare stragglers, remain to be mentioned: the broad-billed sandpiper, pectoral sandpiper, Bonaparte’s sandpiper, American stint, buff-breasted sandpiper, Bartram’s sandpiper, red-breasted snipe, and Esquimaux curlew. With the exception of the first, which breeds in northern Europe and winters in Africa, these are all American species, breeding in or near the arctic regions, and migrating in autumn to South America, in some cases as far south as Patagonia.
Roughly speaking, we may say that, of the thirty-four species of the snipe family described in most ornithological works as ‘British,’ seventeen or eighteen are breeders in or annual visitants to this country; six are occasional visitors--two or three of these are perhaps, annual visitors, but in very small numbers; and the remaining ten are all rare stragglers.
Arctic Tern.
Sterna macrura.
Bill blood-red; legs and feet coral-red; head and nape black; mantle pearl-grey; rump and tail white; under parts paler pearl-grey. Length, fourteen and a half inches.
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The tern has been called a sea-swallow, and he is certainly swallow-like in his slender figure, sharply forked tail, and aërial habits; but he is built on more graceful lines, with proportionately longer wings, and in his white and pearl-grey plumage is the more beautiful bird. The blood-red hue of the beak in the arctic tern gives that touch of bright colour which adds so much to the beauty of a species otherwise wholly black or white; it intensifies a black plumage, as we see in the blackbird and chough, and makes the white plumage seem more immaculate in its whiteness. The flight of the tern is unlike that of any other bird, whether of the sea or land: it is more airy, and suited to the pale, slender, aërial figure; buoyant and slightly wavering, it reminds one a little of the high, apparently uncertain, flight of some large-winged butterfly; and it is in perfect harmony, not only with the slimmer form, but with the idea of a being whose life is passed amid wind and mist and fluctuating wave. It is a rare pleasure to watch a number of these terns feeding in an inlet or bay, where the spectator can sit or lie on a cliff or jutting rock near to and on a level with the birds. They are not concerned at his presence, but, intent on their prey, pass and re-pass before him so near that their round, brilliant eyes may be distinctly seen. The blood-red, dagger-like beak is pointed downwards almost constantly as the bird gazes on the water thirty or forty yards below. All at once the buoyant flight is arrested, the bird hangs motionless in mid-air, the snow-white, forked tail expanded and depressed, the slow-moving, wavering wings rapidly vibrated. In such an attitude he reminds you less of a windhover than of the humming-bird, when that little feathered fairy is seen hovering motionless _above_ the flowers on which its eyes are fixed. Suddenly the wings partly close, and the white figure drops plumb down, with such force as to send up a shower of foam and spray as it strikes on and disappears into the water, to emerge in a moment or two with a small fish in its bill.
The terns, of which there are five breeding-species in the British Islands, are all migrants, and come to us in spring. The arctic tern ranges farthest north: it is the most common species on the coasts of Scotland and its islands; its most southern breeding-station is at the Farnes, off the coast of Northumberland. It breeds in communities sometimes numbering thousands of birds. The nests are placed very near each other, often within half a yard, among scanty grass and herbage, or on the shingle and sand of the beach, and sometimes on the bare rock. Two or three eggs are laid, greatly varying in their ground-colour, olive, buff, greyish brown, stone, and other tints being found; and the spots and blotches of blackish brown and grey may be few or many. The young birds are at first covered with a yellowish down with dark brown spots, and are very active. When the nesting-ground is entered the birds rise up, and hover in a dense cloud above the intruder’s head, their united powerful screams producing an extraordinary noise, like that of the sea on a shingled beach when the withdrawing wave drags back the pebbles with shrill and grating sounds.
In September and October the arctic tern migrates to warmer regions.
Common Tern.
Sterna fluviatilis.
Bill, legs, and feet orange-red; entire plumage as in the arctic tern, except the lower parts, which are more nearly pure white. Length, fourteen and a quarter inches.
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So nearly alike are the arctic and common terns that it is hard, well-nigh impossible, in fact, to distinguish them when they are observed flying about in company. In size, manner of flight, language, and general appearance, they are identical. On a close examination the common tern is found to be slightly less slender in build, its under parts dull white instead of pale grey, its beak tipped with black and coral-red, instead of blood-red. It is doubtless owing to their similarity that the two species associate freely together at all times, and are often to be found breeding side by side. But while the arctic tern is most common in the north, from the Shetlands, Orkneys, and Hebrides, to the coast of Northumberland on the one side of the country, and of Lancashire on the other, the common tern is common only on the coasts south of these two points. The nest is a slight depression, sometimes with a little dry grass for lining, placed on the shingle of the beach; the three eggs are yellowish stone, grey, or olive colour, spotted and blotched with dark brown and grey.
Roseate Tern.
Sterna dougalli.
Bill black, orange-red at the base in the breeding season; legs and feet red; head and upper parts the same as in the arctic and common terns, except that the mantle is a paler pearl-grey; lower parts white suffused with rose. Length, fifteen inches and a quarter.
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This species differs from the two already described in its slimmer body and greater length of tail, and in its shorter and narrower wings. It also differs in the delicate rose-colour suffusing or tinging the white under-plumage; but this faint exquisite hue is seen only when the bird is in the hand. On the wing, unless very near, it appears white and pale grey like the common tern, and only an accustomed eye can distinguish it among the others by its slightly different shape. It may be more easily recognised by its short, constantly repeated note, which is more musical than that of the other species. Besides this short, excited note, it has the long, somewhat guttural, and gull-like cry common to all the terns. It breeds only on islands, and Howard Saunders, our best authority on the birds of this order, says that it is more ‘intolerant of interference’ than other terns: hence many of its old breeding-stations on the British coasts have been successively abandoned during the last half-century owing to egg-collecting, and the bird is now becoming so rare that its extinction as a British species at no distant date is feared by ornithologists. In the north of England, and at various places on the coasts of Scotland, a few pairs still breed in company with the common and arctic terns. The nest is a slight depression in the sand and gravel, and two or three eggs are laid, creamy white or buff-colour, blotched and clouded with bluish grey and rich brown. As soon as the young have been reared the breeding-ground is abandoned, and the migration southwards begins.
Little Tern.
Sterna minuta.
Bill orange-yellow tipped with black; legs and feet orange; crown and nape black; forehead and stripe over the eye white; mantle pearl-grey; tail and under parts white. Length, eight inches.
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