112 BULLETIN 14 6; UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Vaccinium inyrtillus; occasionally also blackberries. Fragments of 

 seaweed have also been found in the stomach. 



Behavior. — The curlew is not popular with the shore shooter, as 

 he is not onl}^ exceptionally wary himself but seems to take a delight 

 in warning other and less suspicious species. Howard Saunders 

 says that he has seen a curlew, after shrieking wildly over the head 

 of a sleeping seal, swoop down and apparently flick with its wing the 

 unsuspecting animal upon which the stalker was just raising his 

 rifle. 



Although a bird of the coast and bare nworlands, it can and does 

 perch not infrequently on trees. In North Brabant, where it breeds 

 on the vast expanses of moorland with scattered belts of small pine 

 trees, I have seen an excited pair perched insecurely on the tips of 

 small trees and keeping up an unceasing succession of anxious yelp- 

 ing notes while their young crouched in the heather below. Although 

 it usually wades, the curlew can on occasion take voluntarily to the 

 water and swims well. 



E7Wmies. — Naumann mentions the peregrine and gyrfalcon, as 

 well as the goshawk among the enemies of this species. Saxby, J. F. 

 Peters, and others have found remains of curlew at the feeding places 

 of the peregrine; and Ussher also states that it is also the case in 

 Ireland. 



Fall. — Early in July the young birds are on the wing on the Eng- 

 lish moors and are already beginning to collect into packs, which 

 leave the breeding grounds about the middle of the month and resort 

 to the shore. 



Winter. — Probably most of the birds which winter on the English 

 coasts are migrants from northern Europe. They chiefly haunt the 

 larger estuaries and the wide mud flats of the east coast, assembling 

 in flocks of fifty to a hundred. When their feeding grounds are 

 covered by the tide they will sometimes work inland, or may be 

 seen waiting for the water to recede on some isolated clump of rock 

 which commands a view in all directions, all facing the same way. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Breeding range. — The British Isles, but only locally in England 

 in the midlands and southeast; also in the Orkneys and Shetlands; 

 but not in the Faroes. On the Continent, France (only in 

 Bretagne), Belgium, Holland, German}^, Denmark (Jutland), 

 Switzerland, Austria, Carinthia, Galicia, Rumania (Dobrogea), 

 Poland, the Baltic Republics, Sweden and Norway, Russia, and Fin- 

 land south to the Perm Government. In Asia it is replaced by an 

 eastern race {N. arquata Uneatus), which ranges east to Japan. 



