British Birds in Their Haunts

by C. A. Johns

A common name for this bird is Sea-pie, another appropriate one is 'Mussel picker'; and it is thought that 'Catcher' comes from the Dutch aekster (magpie). The note is a shrill keep, keep. It swims well, and sometimes it will take to the water of its own accord. Although the nest is commonly on shingle or among sand-hills, or a tussock of sea-pink on a narrow ledge of rock, Mr. Howard Saunders has seen eggs of this bird in the emptied nest of a Herring-gull and on the summit of a lofty 'stack.'

THE TURNSTONE
STRÉPSILAS INTÉRPRES

Crown reddish white, with longitudinal black streaks; upper part of the back, scapulars, and wing-coverts, rusty brown, spotted with black; rest of the plumage variegated with black and white; bill and irides black; feet orange-yellow. Length nine inches. Eggs greenish-grey, blotched and spotted with slate and brown.

The Turnstone is a regular annual visitor to the shores of Great Britain, and indeed of almost every other country, having been observed as far north as Greenland, and as far south as the Straits of Magellan; but it is rarely inland. It arrives on our coasts about the beginning of August, not in large flocks like the Plovers, but in small parties, each of which, it is conjectured, constitutes a family. It is a bird of elegant form and beautiful parti-coloured plumage, active in its habits, a nimble runner, and an indefatigable hunter after food. In size it is intermediate between the Grey Plover and Sanderling, being about as big as a Thrush. The former of these birds it resembles in its disposition to feed in company with birds of different species, and its impatience of the approach of man. For this latter reason it does not often happen that any one can get near enough to these birds to watch their manœuvres while engaged in the occupation from which they have derived their name, though their industry is often apparent from the number of pebbles and shells found dislodged from their socket on the sands where a family has been feeding. Audubon, who had the good fortune to fall in with a party on a retired sea-coast, where, owing to the rare appearance of human beings, they were less fearful than is their wont, describes their operations with his usual felicity: "They were not more than fifteen or twenty yards distant, and I was delighted to see the ingenuity with which they turned over the oyster-shells, clods of mud, and other small bodies left exposed by the retiring tide. Whenever the object was not too large, the bird bent its legs to half their length, placed its bill beneath it, and with a sudden quick jerk of the head pushed it off, when it quickly picked up the food which was thus exposed to view, and walked deliberately to the next shell to perform the same operation. In several instances, when the clusters of oyster-shells or clods of mud were too heavy to be removed in the ordinary way, they would not only use the bill and head, but also the breast, pushing the object with all their strength, and reminding me of the labour which I have undergone in turning over a large turtle. Among the sea-weeds that had been cast on shore, they used only the bill, tossing the garbage from side to side with a dexterity extremely pleasant to behold.[46] In like manner I saw there four Turnstones examine almost every part of the shore along a space of from thirty to forty yards; after which I drove them away, that our hunters might not kill them on their return."

A writer in the Zoologist[47] gives an equally interesting account of the successful efforts of two Turnstones to turn over the dead body of a cod-fish, nearly three and a half feet long, which had been imbedded in the sand to about the depth of two inches.

For an account of the habits of the Turnstone during the breeding season—it never breeds with us—we are indebted to Mr. Hewitson, who fell in with it on the coast of Norway. He says, 'We had visited numerous islands with little encouragement, and were about to land upon a flat rock, bare, except where here and there grew tufts of grass or stunted juniper clinging to its surface, when our attention was attracted by the singular cry of a Turnstone, which in its eager watch had seen our approach, and perched itself upon an eminence of the rock, assuring us, by its querulous oft-repeated note and anxious motions, that its nest was there. We remained in the boat a short time, until we had watched it behind a tuft of grass, near which, after a minute search, we succeeded in finding the nest in a situation in which I should never have expected to meet a bird of this sort breeding; it was placed against a ledge of the rock, and consisted of nothing more than the dropping leaves of the juniper bush, under a creeping branch of which the eggs, four in number, were snugly concealed, and admirably sheltered from the many storms by which these bleak and exposed rocks are visited.

[46] From this habit, the Turnstone is in Norfolk called a 'Tangle-picker'.—C. A. J.

[47] Vol. ix. p. 3077.

FAMILY SCOLOPACIDÆ