62 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
tion.* In the former case he has known the curlew fight 
off the rook when suspiciously approaching its treasures ; 
on the other hand the rook, quietly perched on the trees, 
watches the curlew leave her nest, and at once descends 
to plunder it. The shepherds, when driving their 
sheep on to the lands, always mark the spot where the 
curlew rises, and, by her alertness or not in doing so, 
judge whether the eggs are fresh or set upon. Nearly 
all the eges Mr. Dix has had brought to him at different 
times have been taken in this way by the shepherds or 
their lads, but when a single sheep has approached too 
near to a nest he has seen the old bird flutter its wings, 
and thus, by menacing attitudes, attempt to drive off 
the intruder. 
Unless sought for, or come upon accidentally in their 
wild haunts, these birds are but rarely heard or seen 
during the day, but towards evening they become ex- 
ceedingly clamorous, and as nocturnal feeders chiefly, 
as evidenced by the large prominent eye,+ their loud 
* On the 16th of May, 1867, Mr. Anthony Hamond, jun., pointed 
out to me a nest with two eggs, placed within about fifty or sixty 
yards of a plantation, which bordered one side of a large field at 
Westacre. The birds ran off on our approach, and were soon lost 
sight of amongst the underwood. 
+ Thompson, in his “ Birds of Ireland” (vol. i1., p. 83), states 
that a great plover, in the gardens of the Zoological Society, in 
London, greatly interested him, on various occasions, by its always 
remaining “ fixed as a statue,” so long as he had patience to return 
its gaze, and this in whatever attitude it chanced to be when 
his eye and the bird’s first met. “I tried it,” he says, “from 
different sides of the aviary, and found its performance the same 
from all. The earnestly fixed gaze of its large and prominent dark 
eye had a very singular effect.” And this, no doubt, is its habit in 
a wild state, when, standing sentinel, as it were, on some slight 
elevation, it looks out far and near over its desert home, since, 
motionless as a statue, and in colour assimilating so closely to the 
soil, it may easily escape detection, by even a good observer. The 
chief peculiarity of this custom of the curlew is that the bird 
