VOL. VI.] FIELD-NOTES ON S TONE-CURLEWS. 269 



On May 6th the tent sliook and rattled a good deal, but 

 the bird which finally came on to the eggs made no fuss 

 at all about this. Referring to the note of the observa- 

 tions on ^lay 4th, I was not aware of having made any 

 noise or any suspicious movement, when the bird 

 unexpectedly left the eggs. It seems to me that a possible 

 ex])laiiation of this suspicious behaviour on both days 

 may be that these birds have some sense of smell, which, 

 however, is not very keen. 



I believe that it is generally accepted that most birds 

 are practically devoid of a sense of smell, but that 

 undoubtedly ducks have it fairly developed, as is shown 

 by the experiences of the duck-decoy men, also that there 

 is some probability of some of the Waders, such as the 

 Snipe, being also endowed with it. 



Certainly my previous experience as a bird-photographer 

 has been that as long as a bird — excluding the ducks — 

 did not see or hear me, it appeared to be quite uncon- 

 scious of the close proximity either of myself or of my 

 retiiever, which is very often with me in the tent. It 

 would be interesting to have the experiences of other 

 observers on this subject of the olfactory powers of 

 birds. 



