682 THE HUDSONIAN CURLEW, 
and such an “easy’’ mark flourish unmolested. Kill it, by all means, and thus 
fulfil the destiny of budding manhood! The best opportunity is afforded 
when the bird alights and pauses for a moment with uplifted wings, a yacht 
of the desert come to anchor at the ancestral roadstead. 
During the nesting season, the Sickle-bill throws caution to the winds, 
and hurries forward to meet a prospective intruder with protesting shrieks. 
If the newcomer be really curious as to the whereabouts of the nest, both 
birds will circle and flap and hover and vociferate until one might think that 
Bedlam had broken loose. The extraordinary bill of this bird, sometimes 
eight or even nine inches in length, serves admirably as a pair of chop-sticks, 
and will pick up a weevil as deftly as a Chinese a grain of rice; but as a 
vehicle of emotion the vibrating mandibles are deliciously absurd. Ker- 
er er-er uk, ker er-er-er-uk comes torrentially and unceasingly from the 
anxious throats until one feels forced to join in the excitement, hysterically. 
Shoo! you yawping termigants you! 
The nest is a mere grass-lined depression in the ground of pasture or hill- 
side, and may or may not have convenient access to brook or lake or swamp. 
The eggs, normally four in number, may be found by the 20th or even the 15th 
of April. They are the size of large hens’ eggs, pale buffy-brown or clay- 
colored, variously spotted and blotched with a rich dark brown, and sometimes 
exhibiting traces of violet outcropping from the deeper strata of the shell. 
Only one brood is raised in a season. 
It is high time to retire this quaint and interesting fellow from the list 
of “game birds” and to afford him absolute protection. The struggle for ex- 
istence will be hard enough for him under the conditions imposed by civiliza- 
tion, without our compassing his absolute destruction merely that a few more 
light-hearted pots may boil. Curlews are*still common in certain spots where 
they have been wont to assemble for migrations, but their total numbers have 
certainly been reduced to less than one-quarter, probably nearer one-eighth, of 
their former proportions. 
No. 278. 
HUDSONIAN CURLEW. 
A. O. U. No. 265. Numenius hudsonicus Lath. 
Synonym.—JAck CuRLEW. 
Description.—Adult: Prevailing color pale buffy; crown with two broad 
dusky stripes parted by buffy; a dusky line thru eye; throat whitish, immaculate ; 
sides of head, neck all around, and fore-breast finely streaked with dusky; the 
streaks, widening into bars on sides and flanks ; back, etc., dusky, varied with buffy 
