142 BIRD WATCHING 



the resemblance can be understood. Its affinities 

 with the oyster-catcher are (unless it is the other 

 way about) less close ; yet some part of the piping 

 of the latter bird reminded me strongly of the 

 " clamour," as it is called, of the former one. Some- 

 times, but more rarely, the mournful " too-ee, too-ee, 

 too - ee " of the curlew is followed by a note as 

 mournful, but louder and more abrupt. This sounded 

 to my ear something like " chur-wer — whi-wee," but, 

 of course, all such renderings are arbitrary, and more 

 or less fanciful. 



One of the strangest sounds that came to me on 

 that lonely island was the courting-note of the male 

 eider-duck. This varies a good deal, not in the sound, 

 which is always the same, but in the duration and 

 division of it. Sometimes it is one long-drawn, soft 

 " oh " or " oo," more generally, perhaps, this is 

 syllabled into " oh-hoo " or " ah-oo," and often 

 there is a much longer as well as very distinct and 

 powerful " hoo-oooooo." The sound seems always 

 to be on the point of catching, yet just to miss, the 

 human intonation, sometimes suggesting a soft (though 

 often loud) mocking laugh, at others a slightly ironical 

 or surprised ejaculation. But this human element 

 only just trembles upon it and is gone. Rousing for 

 a moment the sense of man's proximity with its 

 attendant associations, these vanish almost in the 

 forming, and are replaced by a feeling of unutterable 

 loneliness and wildness. For what recalls, yet is 

 far other, enforces the sense of the absence of that 

 which it recalls. Yet this feeling changed too, or, 

 rather, with it there came another as of the unseen 

 world, also, I think, comprehensible, since what is 



