PLOVERS. 89 



the great height at which it stands mark it out at once from 

 the common run of winter plover visitors. 



It will be necessary to return to the plovers before 

 proceeding to the consideration of other allied species, but 

 as our autumn nights will soon be vocal with the cries and 

 calls of migrating flights, a word or two about their varied 

 voices will prove of interest. I know of no better authority 

 on this matter than the Scottish naturalist, Thomas Edward, 

 who has been immortalized by Smiles. "You could hear the 

 shrill whistle of the redshank," he says, "the bright carol 

 of the lark, the wire-like call of the dunlin, the boom of the 

 snipe, and the pleasant peewit of the lapwing. . . . The 

 sandpiper screamed its kittie-needie, the pipit its peepiiiif note, 

 whilst the curlew came sailing down the glen with his shrill 

 and peculiar notes of poo-elie poo-elie coorlie coorlie wha-up." 

 In another place he speaks of the "harsh scream of the heron, 

 the quack of the wild duck, the birbeck of the muirfowl, the 

 wail of the plover, the ciirlee of the curlew, the piping of the 

 redshank and the ring dotterel, and the pleck-pleck of the 

 oyster catcher." 



Not a few representatives of these pass over us during 

 the autumn migration, and it is at night that we hear them 

 best of all. If any pass during the day — which is doubtful — 

 their cries are lost in the noises of the streets, but in the night 

 they are so clear as to frighten superstitious Chinese. 

 Occasionally an observant westerner looking up may see a flight 

 crossing the face of the moon at a great height. Whimbrel, 

 curlew, dotterel, and other plovers form probably the 

 mass of those we hear. The ducks and geese do not come 

 till later. 



