174 THE BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES. 



and winter visitors from more northern haunts. Northward 

 passage reaches its height in April and May. By July the 

 breeders are returning from the hills, and at the end of this 

 month there is at times noticeable passage movement ; from 

 August until October passage and the arrival of winter visitors 

 continues. What proportion of our home-bred birds go south 

 in autumn cannot be ascertained ; many English and Scottish 

 birds winter in Ireland. The Curlew is at all times gregarious 

 and sociable, crowding on banks and rocks when the tide is 

 full, but when on migration its numbers are often immense. 

 It frequently migrates at night, when only a feeble estimate 

 of the passing hordes can be guessed at from the babel of voices 

 of invisible travellers. 



At all times the bird is noisy ; its call— kour-lee — is perhaps 

 the best-known wader note, but this cry has a number of 

 modulations and, variations, the meanings of which the bird 

 knows best. On the moor the call of the " Whaup" may have 

 an amorous inflection, or, as it rises to a startled and startling 

 scream, mean that our presence has been suddenly detected. 

 From the guardian of the nest, standing sentinel on the skyline, 

 it is a warning to the sitting mate, who silently slips from the 

 nest and suddenly makes his or her presence known from a 

 different quarter, and the two birds, so long as an intruder is 

 about, keep up an incessant ivhoo-wee, whoo-wee, whoo-wee, 

 distinct from the other notes. On the moors, before the eggs 

 are laid and even when birds are sitting, the male indulges in 

 a nuptial flight, a rising and falling aerial dance, accompanied 

 by a trilling song, which has much in common with that of the 

 Redshank. Here, too, maybe heard the long, liquid bubbling 

 call, which has no resemblance to the ordinary cry, but which 

 is by no means only a breeding note, and is constantly uttered 

 by birds in winter on the fiats ; I have heard it from night 

 migrants. When the young are crouching in the heather the 

 parents have two other notes, the first, a warning, very similar 



