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Others keep to the cliffs, and many find all they need in the wide mud-flats. Such an army is there of these shore birds, that we cannot even glance at them all in this lesson. So we will take a few of them only the Black-headed Gull, the Cormorant, the Ringed Plover, the Oyster-catcher and the Redshank. Out of all the many kinds of Gulls, you know the Black-headed one best.
The marshes are the home of many a bird like the Redshank. They are all waders and diggers. They live much as he does, and so they have the long beak and legs, and the spreading feet, to fit them for that life. We have now looked at a few sea birds, shore birds, and a marsh bird. Many inland birds, too, are fond of the shore.
As a rule the Redshank digs for his dinner, though he also picks up any worms or other food on the surface; but he is nearly always seen probing the mud. Like all the shore birds, Redshanks are very wary. They have no hedges or trees for hiding-places, and so must always be on the watch. No sooner does the Redshank spy you than he is up and, with a shrill whistle of alarm, flies quickly away.
Kearton somewhere relates how he once induced a blackbird to sit on the eggs of a thrush, and a lapwing on those of a redshank. So, too, farmyard hens will hatch the eggs of ducks or game birds and wild birds can even be persuaded to sit on eggs made of painted wood.
To those who, like myself, love animals, the drive is by no means uninteresting. As the car jolts along past "Hag's Valley," a dozen curlews take wing, and a little further on the shrill cry of the redshank strikes on the ear. Now and then a hare will start among the bent-grass, while aloft the falcon rests poised on her mighty wing.
The redshank, who has much the cut of a snipe, plus red-orange legs, must have heard or seen him coming in the new, thin moonlight, and told all the marsh about it with a shrieking whistled, "Tyop! tyop!"
Birds imitate the note or phrase that strikes them most, and is easiest to imitate, as when the thrush copies the piping and trilling of the redshank and the easy song of the ring-ouzel, which, when incorporated into his own music, harmonizes with it perfectly. But he cannot flute, and so never mimics the blackbird's song, although he can and does, as we have seen, imitate its chuckling cry.
"Oh! they are used to that, plase your honour; they'll go on very quite, and I'll run like a redshank with the news to the castle." He ran on before us with surprising velocity, whilst our tired horses dragged us slowly through the sand.
She was carrying an old hen-redshank in her jaws, its long beak and one of its wings clearly silhouetted against the moon. And apparently she would be very pleased if her husband would come out of the hole and make room for her to stuff the redshank into it.
Professor Ansted includes the Whimbrel in his list, and marks it only as occurring in Guernsey and Sark. There are two specimens in the Museum. REDSHANK. Totanus calidris, Linnaeus. French, "Chevalier gambette." An occasional but never numerous visitant to all the Islands, on both spring and autumn migrations; none appear to remain through the summer.
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