RAVENS, CURLEWS, AND EIDER-DUCKS 139 



wheeled, would have seemed the most likely place 

 in which to search for it. No doubt, had the nest 

 been well concealed, the birds would have done better 

 not to have shown themselves, but conspicuous as it 

 was, they could hardly have adopted a better plan 

 of getting me away from just that part of the coast 

 where it was situated. 



I have spoken in the last chapter of the extreme 

 boldness of the smaller of the two skuas, and how, 

 whether in sport or piracy, he chases birds much 

 larger than himself. It was, therefore, something of 

 a surprise to me when I observed one morning this 

 bold buccaneer being himself pursued by another bird. 

 This was one of a pair of curlews, birds that are as 

 the spirit of the sad solitudes in which they dwell. 

 It is, indeed, more as a part of the scene — that tree- 

 less, mist - enshrouded waste beneath grey northern 

 skies, which they emphasise and add expression to — 

 than in themselves that one gets to consider them. 

 Just thickening with a shape the dank, moist atmos- 

 phere, seeming to have been strained and wrung out 

 from the mist and rain and drizzle, they are, at 

 most, but a moulded, vital part of these. They move 

 like shadows on the mists, when they cry, desolation 

 has found its utterance. And yet, for all this, their 

 general appearance, with their long legs and neck, 

 and immensely long sickle-shaped bill, is very much 

 that of an ibis — insomuch, that seeing them in this 

 bleak northern land, has sometimes almost a bizarre 

 effect. This should seem quite irreconcilable with 

 the other, and yet, though it certainly ought to be, 

 somehow it is not, so that, at one and the same time, 

 this opposite bird brings a picture, by looking like 



