CHAPTER XCII 



CURLEWS 



The old " calloo " is a frequent visitor to the Broadland, 

 in bunches of a dozen, two dozen, or three dozen. At all 

 seasons of the year you may hear the ciir-l-ooc, cur-l-ooi', 

 cur-l-ooc of the leader, as they fly from the wet sea-beach 

 to the marshlands or uplands ; and the crafty gunner often 

 lures them to fly over the reed-bed, where he lies hidden, 

 by merely imitating the leader's whistle, or his wife's, for 

 they have different whistles. You may lure them from afar 

 by this simple trick. 



They are to be seen round about the Broadland any 

 month of the year, feeding by the ebbing tide, seeking grubs 

 and snails on the moist marshes, hunting for worms in the 

 wheat-pieces, delving in the dried cakes of cow-dung for 

 larvce on the hard grass marshes ; for it does not take much 

 food to keep them alive, as it does a snipe or woodcock. 



They are mostly shot at the morning and evening flight- 

 ing hours, as they fly low on these journeys to and from the 

 uplands — the gunners whistling them down, even turning 

 them in their flight, and bringing them right down close to 

 them ; and when they are shot, their black-fleshed breasts 

 are eaten — a dish I care not for, though highly esteemed by 

 some. 



One gunner told me one once came straight to him to 

 see what he was, and he knocked him over with a stick. 

 Inexperienced gunners mistake the snipe's flighting-note, 

 tiittuo, for the similar but harsher curlew's flighting-note. 



But curlews are mere visions in the Broadland, coming and 



