180 HILL BIEDS OF SCOTLAND 



land, but in the High North, beyond, maybe, the Arctic 

 Circle. Our own Curlew, even before the approach of 

 winter — in early days of August, when the winds are still 

 warm on the hills, and when food, one imagines, must still 

 be plentiful — leave the moorlands and set their course 

 south. How far they travel is uncertain. Some winter 

 on Spanish coasts or on the shores of Portugal, but a 

 still more southerly point must be reached by many of 

 those Curlew which have laid their eggs and reared their 

 young on the hills of Scotland. 



The air is soft and mild when the Curlew first arrive 

 at their upland nesting haunts, but as often as not, within 

 a space of a few days, even hours, of their arrival, winter 

 returns with its full severity. Blizzards sweep the moors, 

 pools and mosses become frozen fast, and the poor Whaups 

 have difficulty in obtaining a supply of food sufficient 

 to keep the spark of life alight. Many succumb to such 

 storms, many more fly feebly to and fro, uttering hoarse, 

 husky cries quite unlike their usual clear, whistling notes. 

 Yet it never seems to enter their small minds that a flight 

 of, at the most, two hours' duration, would bring them 

 to the coast, where food must await them on the mud flats 

 of river estuaries even during the most severe weather. 

 Still, were they residents in the district — as is generally, 

 though erroneously, supposed — their line of conduct would 

 be more difficult to understand than if they kncAv these 

 Islands merely as their nesting site and quite unassociated 

 with hard weather. 



For a week or so after their arrival on the hills the 

 Curlew keep together in flocks, but even before the open- 

 ing days of April the majority have paired. It is during 

 April more than any month that the " white land " echoes 

 and re-echoes with the love-song of the Curlew. The singer, 

 flying along the moor a few yards above the surface of the 

 ground, checks his flight and rises almost perpendicularly, 



