Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/114

84 eggs and runs to some distance before she rises. Noisy Redshanks are greatly concerned as to the safety of their nests, which are carefully hidden in the tufts of rushes. A Snipe starts up close before us, rises high into the air till he is a mere speck, then swerves suddenly downwards, making as he descends the well-known buzzing sound, otherwise called "bleating" or "drumming," and believed to be due to the action of the air upon the stiff quills and tail-feathers. No more curious performance marks this month of mating and song. In certain parts of the country the Black-headed Gulls now flock in large numbers to their breeding stations, the meres and "broads" of Norfolk, the "fleets" of the Essex marshes, or the "flows" of the Solway, hovering like a cloud of snowflakes above the chosen site. In similar spots the Wild Duck leads out her brood, and the Coot moors her floating mass of dead flags and rushes to the branch of a fallen tree which stretches out level with the water. The Little Grebe, or Dabchick, has returned to the reed-fringed pond, and on larger sheets of water the Great Crested Grebe may be seen displaying in full beauty its curious head-gear consisting of a double crest and tippet.

Upon rocky parts of the coast, April is marked by the return to their breeding haunts of a host of seafowl, Guillemots, Razorbills and Puffins. The loud jubilant cackle of the Herring Gulls is heard from the