The Common Redshank is eleven inches in length. Its plumage also has the hemp-seed speckling, but is more thickly speckled and barred. Beak long; legs long, of a bright orange-red. It is perceptibly webbed between the toes. Tail white, with dark bars. The dark wings are adorned with a white patch, the sides with pointed spots like drops. Its nest is found in wet marsh, or moorland, between the weeds and creeping stems, in little dips, and consists simply of straw litter. It lays four pear-shaped eggs, which are arranged in the nest with the points towards one another. The ground colour is clay-yellow, and they are speckled with greyish and dark-brown spots and flecks.
The Green Sandpiper.
(Totanus óchropùs.)
The flight of the Green Sandpiper is very rapid; the note is a shrill tui-tui-tui. The food of the bird consists of insects chiefly, with small red worms and fresh water snails. It is not good to eat, having a disagreeable musty odour.
The Green Sandpiper is not uncommon in many parts of England and Wales, on the spring as well as on the autumnal migration. On the east side of Scotland it is fairly frequent, but in the north it is very rare. To Ireland it pays unfrequent visits, even in autumn. “The Green Sandpiper is a restless bird, for ever moving on,” says “A Son of the Marshes.” “Something impels him to constant haste.... The first time I met him, unexpectedly, was on a breezy upland common, with just enough wind blowing to carry the white clouds along without blowing them to pieces, a few sheep were wandering about, their bells tinkling. On one side of the common are a number of old blackthorns, with wisps of wool sticking on their rough stems, then comes the long high-road, and close to the road is a small pond, gravel-edged, where the cattle that graze on the common come to drink. A shrill whistle, and in front of us is a beautiful bird. He runs a short distance, his feet just in the water, picks at something, whistles, and is off, over some old beech-trees. I have examined him dead, and have seen him and his mate exquisitely set up by a naturalist and bird-stuffer, but you must see him alive to form any idea of the dashing vitality of the bird itself.”
USEFUL CHIEFLY.
THE GREEN SANDPIPER.