You walk nearer, to watch
him. Alas! he is gone. You know just where he settled, yet he is gone!
He has often played that trick on me.
The secret lies in his grey, white-and-black markings. When our ships
were in danger from enemy submarines, our sailors painted them with
queer stripes and bars, to make it hard for the enemy to see them.
Nature has marked the Ringed Plover on the same plan. The feathers are
so coloured and the colours are so arranged that, once among the grey,
yellow, black, and white pebbles on the beach, the little bird is
invisible. It is as if the earth had swallowed him up.
The eggs, too, are just as hard to find. There is no nest to "give the
game away"; and the eggs look just like the pebbles amongst which they
are laid. The young ones are protected from their enemies in the same
way, and they crouch, as still as death, amid the stones which they so
much resemble.
Now let us leave the beach and look for the Redshank on the mud-flats.
Many birds would starve there, but the Redshank is quite happy, as
Nature has fitted him for his life in such a place.
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