198 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
appearance in the marshes about harvest time, are 
known to the gunners as the “ great harvest curlews,” 
and suggests that they are “ probably old females col- 
lected together after the breeding season.” These he 
describes as “the most clamorous,” and, when flying 
singly, as answering most readily to the whistle. On 
the other hand, both Folkard and my friend Mr. 
Harting, are inclined to believe that the difference in 
size is merely a matter of age, but having recently 
ascertained beyond a doubt that the very marked dif- 
ference in size in specimens of the bar-tailed godwit, 
is purely sexual (the females being the largest), I 
cannot help thinking that future observations will 
prove that the same rule applies to the greater and 
lesser curlews. 
Some thirty years ago, as Mr. Thomas Edwards in- 
forms me, these “great harvest curlews” used regularly 
to come up from the sea in August, to feed on the 
« Ollands,”’ at Hempstead, near Holt, numbering at 
times some thirty or forty in a “herd,” when many of 
them were shot; but according to Folkard those killed 
“far inland, in ploughed fields and fresh water meadows, 
are not so palatable” as the birds shot on the ooze or in 
salt marshes; and Mr. Lubbock speaks of their excel- 
lence when procured in the marshes, as compared with 
their rank flavour after feeding on the sea-shore. Of 
their estimation in former times as a delicacy for the 
table we have ample testimony. In the L’Estrange 
“Household Book” we find no less than seven entries 
relating to this species; in one instance a pair are 
received as a present; in another, two are received of 
“oyste” (in lieu of rent.) Single curlews are pur- 
chased at from four pence to five pence each, and on 
one occasion three fetched, in Snettisham Market, two 
shillings (the then price of a fat sheep), whilst at the same 
time three woodcocks were procured for sixpence. The 
