STONE-CURLEW. 227 



East Riding, but to West Yorkshire it is only a straggler ; 

 and in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Wales its occurrence is 

 very rare, if not absolutely unknown. North of Yorkshire 

 a specimen of the Stone-Curlew was obtained in February, 

 1864, near South Shields ; and another, killed on the 27th 

 January, 1858, near St. Andrew's, Fife, is in the Museum 

 of that University. In Ireland only three authenticated 

 occurrences — all of them in winter — are enumerated by 

 Thompson, and since he wrote about as many more have 

 been recorded. 



At the present day the headquarters of the Stone-Curlew 

 are upon the open ' brecks ' and warrens of Norfolk and 

 Suffolk. The late J. D. Hoy, in a letter to the Author, says, 

 " there is no part of England where the Qi^dicnemus crepi- 

 tans so abounds as upon the sandy plains of Norfolk ; great 

 numbers have been caught in most seasons by the Sub- 

 scription Heron Hawks at Didlington Hall, Norfolk ; they 

 have been known to take refuge in a rabbit burrow when 

 pursued by the Hawk." 



The late J. D. Salmon, then of Thetford, says of this 

 species, " that it is very numerously distributed over all 

 our warrens and fallow lands during the breeding-season, 

 which commences about the second week in April, the 

 female depositing its pair of eggs upon the bare ground, 

 without any nest whatever ; it is generally supposed that 

 the males take no part in the labour of incubation ; this I 

 suspect is not the case : wishing to procure for a friend, a 

 few specimens in their breeding plumage, I employed a boy 

 to take them for me ; this he did by ensnaring them on the 

 nest, and the result was that all those he caught during the 

 day proved, upon dissection, to be males. They assemble 

 in flocks previous to their departure, which is usually by 

 the end of October ; but should the weather continue open, 

 a few will remain to a much later period ; I started one as 

 late as the 9th of December, in the autumn of 1834." 



These birds are usually seen in unenclosed countries or 

 where the fields are large, and they frequent sheep-walks, 

 fallow lands, heaths, and warrens. The late Mr. Lubbock 



