28 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



though they will not have egg's till a month or five weeks 

 later. They are already as black on the breast as our 

 local plovers ever became : for these never attain the full 

 black under-parts usually depicted, and which are only 

 acquired by those that breed further north. Our North- 

 umbrian plovers at best are only marbled. 



Their loud and wild spring note — a plaintive whistle, 

 " Tirr-pee-you "• — may now be heard on the high moors: 

 but not among the packed plovers on the lower grounds 

 and haughs. This note is only uttered when the birds 

 are on wing, circling high in air. 



My readers will, I trust, forgive the length to which 

 this note on a single species has extended. I have given 

 it in detail, partly because it is interesting in itself; but 

 chiefly because it is applicable to many congeneric and 

 other birds at this season, and will not now need to 

 be repeated in each case. 



In February the Curlews return, and welcome is the 

 first sound of their wild long-drawn rippling note and 

 the first sight of the shapely clean-cut form sailing across 

 the dark heather. Their arrival has occurred as early 

 as February 5th, and as late as March nth, the average 

 being after mid-February. In stormy seasons, when 

 the fells are buried in snow, the curlews delay their 

 return till the snow has melted: as in 1886, when none 

 appeared on the moors till March 19th. These curlews 

 are also travellers from afar. They have come — not 

 from adjacent seashores — but from Spanish marismas, 

 from African lagoons, and from the Mediterranean. The 

 curlews of our own coast do not breed here. They remain 

 on the sandflats and oozes, where they have spent the 

 winter, all through the months of February, March, and 

 April, and retire to their more northern breeding-grounds 



