W. FARREN: STONE - CURLEW. 305 



escape observation if the parents maintained a discreet 

 silence. The Stone-Curlew is even quieter when it has 

 young- — of any ag'e — than before hatching* takes place. 



Aided b}^ previous knowledge of the spot frequented by 

 a Stone-Curlew family, one may, with great care, approach 

 near enough to make out the two adults and two young, 

 all standing and quite near to each other. Directly the 

 intruder is detected, the young birds drop to the ground 

 and remain motionless, while the parents steal swiftly 

 away, and give no indication of anxiety or of their 

 presence in the neighbourhood, not even if one walks up 

 to and handles the young. Other species, under similar 

 circumstances, would become frantic in their attempts to 

 drive, or beguile away the intruder. That feigned lameness 

 and loud cries are devices which have been developed and 

 perfected by natural selection there can be no doubt, and 

 I think we must consider the silence of the Stone-Curlew 

 a later development more suited to the peculiar conditions 

 of its environment, in which cover is altogether lacking. 



Although the young Stone-Curlew crouches as soon as 

 it leaves the egg-shell, its first performance is very different 

 to the extreme phase of the attitude as shown in all the 

 photographs, with the exception of Fig. 1 . In this photo- 

 graph, which is of two newly-hatched j^oung-, it will be seen 

 that the body is somewhat humped and the neck contracted, 

 which brings the head close to the shoulders, the attitude 

 being-, in fact, very much like the hiding crouch of the young 

 of many ground-nesting birds. But the development of the 

 later phase of the attitude is very rapid ; at the expiration of 

 a week not only is the body more depressed, but the 

 neck is fully extended and pressed close to the ground, 

 and long before the end of the second week of its existence 

 the young bird assumes the extremely flattened attitude 

 shown in Fig. 2. The birds in this photograph were 

 probably not more than ten days old, and those in Figs. 3 

 and 4, which show indication of growing feathers, were 

 hardly less than three weeks old. The crouching liabit is 

 by no means limited to the period of comparative helpless- 



