643 

 COMMON CURLEW. 



Numenius arquata {L.). 



Resident ; local, breeds on most of the moors in the West and North 

 Ridings, least numerous in the south. Leaves the breeding haunts in 

 July or August for the coast, where it remains during the winter, 

 returning to the moors in March or April. A great influx of immigrants 

 in autumn. 



The Curlew's ancestry in Yorkshire is of great antiquity, 

 for it is mentioned in connection with the Nevell banquet 

 at Cawood in 1466, the items at the feast including " Curlewes, 

 100 " (Leland's " Collectanea "). It figured in the North- 

 umberland Household Book, in 1512 ; amongst the birds to 

 be provided " for my Lordes owne Mees " being " Kyrlewes," 

 with the price fixed at I2d. each. Again, at the marriage 

 feast of the daughter of Sir John Neville, at Chevet, near 

 Wakefield, in 1526, " Eighteen Curlews " were enumerated 

 in the bill of fare ; and during Sir John's Shrievalty, the 

 expenses, returned at the Lammas Assizes, included "Twenty 

 Curlews, £1 6s. 8d." 



Thomas Allis, writing in 1844, reported : — 



Numenius arquata. — Common Curlew — Sometimes seen on the moors 

 in the neighbourhood of Halifax and Huddersfield ; rare at Leeds and 

 Hebden Bridge ; occasionally seen near York, and common near Shef- 

 field and Doncaster, and is rare about Huddersfield. In the Museum of 

 the Yorkshire Philosophical Society there is a skeleton of this bird, 

 which had its knee dislocated, the femur had passed behind the tibia, 

 so that the weight of the body was supported wholly on that leg by the 

 tendons ; the action of the end of the femur on the posterior portion of 

 the tibia had caused such a secretion of bone that a socket was formed 

 in which the end of the femur worked, and which again gave it an osseous 

 support. Arthur Strickland reports that a few frequent the sea shore 

 and adjoining grounds every autumn, but do not remain long. 



In addition to being a well-known summer resident on 

 the moors and fells of Yorkshire, the Curlew is an autumn 

 or winter migrant to the coast, and one of the most ardently 

 desired spoils of the shore shooter ; in the Tees and Humber 



