THE CURLEW 



NUMENIUS ARQUATUS 



Gthlbneach, Guilbinn (Gaelic). 



" Coire's nm bidh guilbnich " = " A corrie where curlew are found." 



Grosser Brachvogel (German) ; Le Courlis (French) ; Whaup, 



QuHAUP, OB Faup (Scottish). 



As the Tarmachan is essentially the true bird of the high 

 mountain lands, so the Curlew may be said to breathe 

 out the spirit of the lesser hills, of the rolling moors, re- 

 mote, yet not entirely beyond human dwellings. There 

 are two bird notes I think inseparable with these moor- 

 lands. One is the vibrating, impassioned calling of the 

 Curlew ; the other is the pipe of the Golden Plover. Dur- 

 ing the first days of March the moorlands are without 

 sound, seemingly without life even. And then the Cur- 

 lews arrive in their hundreds. The country of heather 

 is silent no longer. On every side one hears, on these fine 

 mornings of early spring, whistling, trilling cries — cries 

 which are thrown far across the moors and re-echo through 

 the glens. But it is in a wood — one of those thickets of 

 naturally-sown Scots pines, the remnants of the great 

 Caledonian forest — that one realises what a strength 

 and power there are in the Curlew's love-song, for here 

 the notes resound, thrown back from many trees, in a 

 manner that compels attention. 



Although the fact is not generally known, even amongst 

 bird lovers, few of the Curlew which make our hills such 

 happy places during the months of spring have wintered 

 in these Islands. True, there are representatives of the 

 species in their thousands to throng our mud flats during 

 short January days, but they have nested, not in Scot- 



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