BAK-TAILED GODWIT.— COMMON CUELEW. 249 



appear in August, and until they are disturbed they are 

 exceedingly tame ; but being much prized for the table, 

 they are persecuted by the gunner and soon become very 

 shy and wary. Formerly they were fattened on bread and 

 milk, and fetched a very high price. 



They frequent the mud flats throughout the winter, 

 retiring to the beach at high tides, and feed on various 

 worms, shellfish, and insects, probing for them with their 

 long bills, and sweeping from side to side, and are common 

 all along the coast, but are seldom met with inland. They 

 breed in Lapland, and on the Petchora, and various places 

 in the north of Europe. Mr, Wolley obtained the eggs in 

 Finland. The nest is very slight, — a little dry grass or short 

 herbage placed in a depression in the ground. Mr. J. H. 

 Gurney, jun., in his paper on "The Spring Migration of 

 Birds at St. Leonards " in the ' Transactions of the Norfolk 

 and Norwich Naturalists^ Society ' (vol. iii. p. 174), observes 

 that a single Bar-tailed Godwit had frequented a small marsh 

 at Bexhill for several days, when on the 10th of May it was 

 joined by twenty-five more, of which about one third were 

 in full breeding-plumage. On another occasion he observed 

 that the Godwits kept apart from the smaller Waders, and 

 that they did not object to the waves splashing them, 

 though they sometimes almost lifted them off their feet. 



COMMON CURLEW. 



Numenius arquata. 



This species is found in great abundance on the mud flats 

 in spring and autumn, and at high water the birds retire to the 

 full of the beach, or to a sjiort distance inland. They are 



