SCOLOPACIDA. ate 
WuHIMBREL, Numenius pheopus. This bird, which 
looks very like, and may easily be mistaken for, a 
small Curlew, is a spring and autumn visitor to our 
coast: it is, however, much less common in the 
autumn than in the spring, and this appears to be 
generally the case in other parts of England. In 
the more northern parts, such as the Shetland and 
Orkney Islands, it remains to breed. 
The nest is generally placed on heathy moors, be- 
side some old stump or raised grassy lump of earth, 
and is made of dry grasses or vegetable matter.* 
While on its visits to us the food of the Whimbrel 
consists mostly of small shell-fish, which it picks 
up on the mud of the sea-shore and of tidal rivers: of 
these shell-fish it must devour a good many, as the 
stomach of one I shot at Exmouth in the spring of 
1868 contained two small crabs, nearly whole, one of 
them measuring as much as three-quarters of an inch 
across, and the other was nearly the same size; 
besides these two were the arms and legs and 
pieces of the shells of various others, but nothing 
else that I could detect: it does eat other shell-fish, 
such as mussels, &c. When more inland it appears 
to live upon snails, worms, beetles, grasshoppers, 
crickets and other insects, as well as certain berries, 
such as bilberries, whortleberries and crowberries.t 
* Meyer's ‘ British Birds,’ vol. iv., p. 199. 
Fo Idy p. 19, 
2K 
