288 CHARADRIIFORMES CHAP. 
latter barred with dark brown; the belly is white, the breast 
nearly so in winter. Found on our shores from autumn to spring, 
its wary habits are as well-known as its wild rippling note; the 
food consists of insects, worms, berries, and so forth; while four 
large pear-shaped olive-and-brown eggs are deposited in an ample 
depression formed on boggy or heathery ground. V. cyanopus, a 
distinct East Siberian form, met with in Australia and occasionaliy 
from New Guinea to Borneo in winter, has the rump-region brown 
Fig. 59.—Curlew. Numenius arquata. xt. 
and black. WV. tenuirostris, of the Mediterranean and South Russia, 
resembles the Curlew, but is much smaller; \. longirostris of 
temperate North America, migrating to Central America and the 
Antilles, has cinnamon axillaries—like all the New World mem- 
bers of the genus—and a dark rump. The remaining species, or 
Whimbrels, have a pale central streak down the crown, less dis- 
tinct in WV. borealis, the Eskimo Curlew, which has rufous axillaries 
barred with brown, and a rump like the back. This bird wanders to 
Britain, but breeds in the extreme north of America, and in winter 
reaches the south of that Continent. WV. phaeopus,the typical Whim- 
