The male may run on a yard or two, but soon stops.
He first unfolds his wings and raises them right above his back so as to expose their conspicuous undersurface of pure white, somewhat clouded or barred with grey. Then fluttering them tremulously but keeping them raised all the time he advances very, very slowly towards the hen, lifting his feet high in the air and often putting them down scarcely in advance of where they were before. Meantime as he steps on he stretches his neck a little forward, opens his mouth, and gives utterance to a single continuous note, which is changed into a long roll or rattle by the quick vibration of the lower mandible. The sound is quite like that of a nightjar, but higher and without any of the little breaks in the pitch of the note. So he advances closer and closer, the hen usually remaining motionless. Again at any time during this stage she may reject his suit by flying off, but if she is going to accept him, she simply stays still, often without moving a muscle the whole time. As the cock gets closer, he gets more and more excited, vibrates his wings more and more rapidly, at length so fast that almost his whole weight is supported by them, though he still continues to execute the high stepping movements with his feet. At last when just behind the hen, he abandons the ground and flutters up on to her back on which he half alights. The period when he is there on her back is the third and last state of the courtship; it is very short and is of course in a sense nothing more than getting into the proper position for the actual pairing. Sometimes the hen, suddenly repugnant, gives a violent jerk or sideways twist and shakes him forcibly on to the ground, herself running or flying away. Occasionally, however, she apparently is satisfied; she spreads her tail diagonally and the cock with a quick and wonderfully graceful motion, half supported all the time by his fluttering wings, accomplishes the act of pairing. Then the hen gives the same violent twist that I have just mentioned, he gets shaken off, and they both begin quietly feeding, often side by side.
The love flight of the redshank is a very striking feature of the courtship and may be seen even after incubation has begun. J. S. Huxley (1912) describes it as follows:
A redshank rises up into the air, and there flies in a series of switchbacks. Just before the bottom of each switchback he gave very quick wing flaps, almost fluttering, one would call it, this made him start up again. He went on fluttering or flapping till he was about halfway up and for the rest of the upstroke of the switchback he soared up with the impetus he had gained. His wings now were set back and down; his neck and head thrown up in a beautiful proud attitude; his tail spread out. Then he turned the angle of his wings and glided down, still in the same attitude.
While flying thus he gives vent to what one may call a song—a series of pure, sweet single notes, never uttered on other occasions. The flight may be quite short, or may go on for several minutes. W. Farren (1910) writing of the same love-flight describes the song as "Dhu-lee, dhu-lee, du-lee, du-lee, du-le, dle-dle-dle-dle," the latter part becoming shorted and quicker as it nears the end, when it may be continued to a vanishing point.
It should be noted that the nightjar-like note already referred to is only used on the second stage of the courtship, yet it was audible at all hours of the day and night from which Huxley deduced that, as only a fraction of the courtships were consummated and the total number of birds did not exceed 50, each bird must pair several times a day.
The contests between the males seem to be usually of a formal character, but Selous (1906) describes one case where two birds fought with determination, jumping at one another and each attempting to seize the mandibles of the other with its own.
Nesting.—The Iceland redshank has very similar habits to the ordinary European bird and haunts the swamps and morasses near the sea as well as the neighborhood of the larger lakes inland during the breeding season. Here it nests in colonies, varying in number from five or six to about twenty pairs. The nests are usually some distance apart, and generally well concealed, the sitting bird choosing a hollow where the vegetation grows thickest. In the British Isles the common redshank has greatly increased its breeding range during the last 25 years and has gradually made its way inland up the river valleys to many districts where it was previously quite unknown. Here it shares its breeding grounds with the lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), but the nest is not exposed like that of the latter but neatly hidden at the foot of some tall wisp of dead grass. The bird will even twist the dead grasses together to get the required protection and some nests are so artfully hidden that they can only be found by accidentally flushing the bird. In an East Anglian marsh a bird got up almost at my feet. There was a small flattened tussock of grass with long dead stalks growing up round it, but not a sign of nest or eggs, yet I felt certain that the bird had been incubating. On probing the solid-looking green tussock my fingers slipped into a hollow space beneath, where the four eggs were lying. The bird had been sitting in a neat cup of grass, completely roofed in above, and had slipped out by parting the growing grass at the side, which had closed up again. Exceptionally nests may be found, especially near the coast, quite exposed, but as a rule the bird takes advantage of every bit of cover available. On the level patches of short rich grass in the Dutch polders many pairs breed, and I have seen sixteen nests in a day. Narrow drains only a few inches wide are cut by the farmers in the turf, and here the grass is not cropped quite so close at the sides, so even under these disadvantageous conditions the redshanks avoid the open flats and prefer the partial concealment of the drain sides. In the great mud flats of the Marisma of the River Guadalquiver in South Spain, too, there is little in the way of cover, but the nests are never so exposed as those of the stilt or avocet. But wherever found, whether in Iceland, Holland, or Spain, there are the excited parents flying round and round with incessant and clamorous cries of tu-e-too, tu-e-too, alarming all the other breeding species and generally the first to give warning of danger.
The nest is substantially made of grasses and hollowed out by the pressure of the bird's breast and little in the way of extraneous matter is used, though occasionally, especially in open sites, quite a substantial cup may be built of stalks, grasses, bits of heath, moss, etc.