So what makes a beach? First up, I personally think, is sand, so this card is here because it shows the SAND Martin.
Unfortunately this name has nothing to do with beach sand, and the card tells us that "it chooses for its nesting place the vertical surface of a bank, sand pit, or railway cutting."
This card ties another loose end, because this set was issued several times, and we have at last been able to link it to the main listing, which is the Churchman printing.
For once there is not that large of a description in our original Lambert & Butler reference book, RB.9, published in 1948 but it adds to the intrigue. It reads :
25. 50. BIRDS & EGGS. Fronts lithographed, photo-screen plus hand drawn colours. Backs in green, with descriptions. 1906 and 1917
Now in a case like that, where two dates are mentioned, it means that the original set, in that case issued in 1906, was reprinted again using the original artwork and without any changes, making it impossible to tell the two apart. Very often such reprinting was caused by a desire to get back to normal issuing after the First World War, without having the time or the resources to design a whole new set from scratch, but 1917 is too early for such to be true in this case.
The reprinting is sadly not mentioned in either of our World Tobacco Issues Indexes; the set is simply listed as :
BIRDS & EGGS. Sm. Nd. (50). See H.60
That H.60 reference leads us to the handbook, where it is revealed that the set has other issuers and is available in different formats. And you can look at that listing on our main page for this set.