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OCCURRENCE OF THE ESQUIMAUX CURLEW {NUMENIU8 

 B0REALI8) IN SCOTLAND. 



BY J. LONGMtriR, ESQ., JUN. 



This bird is the third, smallest, and rarest of our British Curlews. Its 

 claim to a place in the British fauna, if not the European also, rests on a 

 single specimen, killed on the 6th of September, 1855, in the parish of Dur- 

 ris, lOncardineshire, a few miles from Aberdeen, by W. R. Cusack Smith, Esq., 

 at the time occupying Durris House. The bird was sent to be stuffed by 

 Mr. Mitchell, Aberdeen ; and was examined a few days after, by the writer, 

 who ascertained it to be the Esquimaux Curlew {Numenius horealis). Un- 

 luckily, it was not measured when in the flesh, and the sex was not observed; 

 but it appears to be a female, in almost complete winter livery. 



Some queries sent to its fortunate possessor were most courteously an- 

 swered in a letter, from which the following passages are extracted : " I shot 

 the bird on the 6th of this month (September). I was standing on a cairn 

 of stones, which is at the top of a hill on the ' muir,' belonging to Durris, 

 called Cair-monearn ;* and was looking at the view, when my gamekeeper 

 said to me that there was a Golden Plover close to me, on the south-east side 

 of the cairn. I looked and saw a bird walking slowly about, just as a Plover 

 would do ; and as soon as I could get my gun, I went up to the bird and shot 

 it. Its flight was very similar to that of a Sea-gull. The bird was quite 

 alone. I did not hear it utter any note, and I think if it had done so, I must 

 have heard it. It seemed very much disinclined to rise from the ground ; 

 and allowed me to get within twenty yards of it." 



To this very circumstantial account, a few remarks, gleaned from the 

 " American Ornithological Biography " of Audubon, and the " Fauna Bore- 

 ali-Americana " of Swainson and Richardson, may be added. It spends the 

 summer months in the barren tracts within the arctic circle. A few days 

 from the close of July, 1883, Audubon found companies of them making 

 their appearance in Labrador, near the harbour of Bras d' Or. They came 

 from the north, arriving in dense flocks, much after the manner of the Pas- 

 senger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratoria) . In early autumn, they remain a few 

 days, while on their way southward, in Massachusetts, where, " during their 

 short stay, they are met with on the high sandy hills near the sea-shore." 

 Their food consists of Grubs, Grasshoppers, and fresh-water insects ; but 

 principally of a kind of crow-berry, known among the fishermen of Labrador 

 as the curlew-berry. " It is a small black fruit on a creeping shrub, so abun- 

 dant, that patches of several acres cover the rocks here and there. When 

 the birds were in search of food, they flew in close masses, sometimes high, 

 at other times low, but always with remarkable speed, and performing beau- 

 tiful evolutions in the air. The appearance of man did not seem to intimidate 



* Cue of tUeGi'ampiau mnge, some twelve lujiul»«<i--feetabove aea-levej 

 VOL. V. /^^ f^>ik^ « 



