THE CURLEW 221 



prepared for us. One by one the dark- coloured birds rise 

 from the marshy heath and fly anxiously about, uttering their 

 peculiar note : mrlee, cur-lee sounds in all directions, and the 

 startled birds watch our actions from the sky with ever-in- 

 creasing anxiety. Like the Snipe, the Curlew performs those 

 various graceful evolutions high in air, usually when its 

 haunts are invaded. But what are the Curlews doing here ? 

 Why have they left the lowland pastures and littoral haunts 

 for such scenes as these ? The one great object of their visit 

 here is to rear their young in a suitable temperature, where 

 the food supply is ample, and where they may obtain that 

 seclusion and immunity from danger which their shy and 

 wary nature demands. Search closely among the heath and 

 coarse vegetation of the moor, and you will most probably be 

 rewarded by a sight of their nest and eggs. Your attention 

 must be confined to the extensive swampy flats, where bogs, 

 reeds, and rushes are abundant, occasionally studded with 

 heathy tracts of dryer ground. 



We can scarcely class the Curlew as a gregarious bird 

 durincr the breeding: season, but still it is to a certain extent 

 a social one, and numbers of their nests may be found 

 scattered up and down the same reedy wastes. Curlews pair 

 annually, sometimes before they quit their winter quarters, 

 and sometimes not until they arrive at their breeding grounds. 

 The Curlew's nest may be sought by the middle or latter end 

 of April, though not unfrequently the birds do not commence 

 breeding till early May should the weather be stormy. The 

 nest is usually placed on some little patch of dry land, where 

 its scanty materials serve their small purpose. It will some- 

 times be placed on a thick tuft of bog grass, at others under 

 the shelter of a heather bush or clump of herbage, and is 

 almost invariably on some little eminence. More rarely the 

 eggs are deposited in the scantiest apology for a nest on the 

 ploughed fields— the " summer fallows " on the borders of the 



