The "joint flight" is shared by both sexes and is normal in character, both birds (but especially the male) calling quickly as when rising for the ceremonial flight. The female is generally slightly in front of the male on these occasions. During the "tail display" the male struts round the hen with the tail fully expanded like a fan, but depressed to about an angle of 60° to 70° with the horizontal and tilts it from side to side so that the black and white surface is presented to the female. The "scrape ceremony" is chiefly confined to the male who runs to a depression and crouches down in it with slightly open wings, tail coverts puffed out and compressed tail pointing upwards, while he presses his breast against the ground as if smoothing off a scrape. Females were noticed to go through this action with appreciably spread tails and after some scratching with the feet.
Other godwits are always pursued with loud outcry, as well as harriers, lapwings, etc., but there is little real fighting between males, and what there is does not seem to be of a particularly vicious type. The opponents face each other and attempt to seize each other's bills, striking with their feet as they descend from the jump. Such sparring rarely lasts longer than two or, at the outside, three minutes. In coition the hen stands rigid with horizontal bill, the male standing about a foot behind her "with vibratory wings and spread tail, uttering a clear disyllabic note; then he rises and floats forward above the female with dangling legs and no apparent change in the rate of vibration of his wings. He poses for a moment upon her back, still calling with wings held stiffly upspread and vibrating tail. Immediately after pairing both birds usually continue feeding."
Nesting.—The breeding grounds of this species vary considerably in character. On the great heaths of Brabant one may come across a pair nesting in short, dry heather; in the dune country on the Dutch coast they breed among the sea buckthorn and sallow bushes on the sandhills; in Texel most pairs prefer the rectangular patches of rich grass in the "polders" (reclaimed marshes), while in Jutland and Iceland a few pairs breed on the vast expanses of quaking marsh near the coast. Nowhere have we met with it more plentifully than in the Dutch polders where I have seen as many as 13 nests with eggs in a single day. All were much alike; a saucer-like hollow in the ground where the grass was thickest and richest, lined with a thick pad of dead grass.
Eggs.—Here are laid the four pyriform eggs; five have been recorded once or twice, but the only case of six eggs which is known to me was probably due to two females sharing a nest. As a rule the eggs do not vary much, though sometimes a single egg may be found in which the ground color is pale bluish gray with blotches of deeper ashy gray and a few darker flecks. The great majority of eggs vary in color from greenish or olive green to olive brown and occasionally reddish brown in ground, with blotches or spots of darker brown or olive and a few ashy shell marks. The measurements of 100 eggs average 54.71 by 37.37 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 59.8 by 37.8, 55.3 by 40.7, 48.5 by 37.7, and 55 by 34 millimeters.
Young.—The only estimate of the incubation period known to me is that of Faber, who gives it as 24 days, but recent evidence on this point is lacking. Both sexes share in the work of incubation, according to von Wangelin, and this is confirmed by Huxley and Montague, who noticed that in the earlier stages the male spent, at least in one case, three hours on the nest to one by the female. This, however, applies only to the daytime. Hantzsch's statement, that apparently it is carried out by the hen alone, seems to be quite erroneous. The downy young as soon as dried are led out of the nest and are closely attended to by both parents. Only a single brood is reared in the season.
Plumages.—The molts and plumages are fully described in "A Practical Handbook of British Birds," edited by H. F. Witherby (1920), to which the reader is referred.
Food.—Naumann (1887) records insect larvae, worms, snails and slugs, fish and frog spawn, tadpoles; also insects (Coleoptera, Orthoptera, and Odonata). On migration, shells of small marine and fresh-water mollusca have been found in stomachs, also insects, small shore crustacea (Gammaridae) and the usual sand or gravel.
Behavior.—The godwits are striking looking birds, readily recognizable in summer plumage by the cinnamon pink of the neck and breast and the bold contrast of black and white in the tail, taken in connection with the long legs and straight, slightly upturned bill. The latter character at once distinguishes them from the whimbrels and curlews and their large size marks them out from most of the other European Limicolae. The loud, musical, disyllabic call of the male is also very characteristic. In winter the warm coloring is lost, but the godwits are noisy birds and at this time of year the breeding note is replaced by a monosyllabic chut. Moreover, their contour when flying overhead is peculiar, for the long legs are carried out beyond the tail and have somewhat the effect of long middle tail feathers not unlike those of the Arctic skua or jaeger.
Fall.—In the British Isles they begin to appear on our southeast coasts in August, though not in any numbers as a rule, and have generally left before the end of October. The Iceland birds assemble in flocks at the end of August and leave the island by the beginning of September, while in south Sweden, the Baltic republics, and Poland they desert their breeding grounds in the latter part of July and drift southwards to the North German coast. None stay in Holland after September, and gradually they work their way southward to the shores of the Mediterranean, where a certain number winter in favorable localities. The main streams of migration seem to be towards the Straits of Gibraltar on the west side and along the east side of the Balkan Peninsula, but along the west side of the peninsula they are much scarcer. Considerable numbers of west Asiatic birds migrate to the marshes of the Euphrates and winter there, while others pass into India and Burma.