(as) 
DP 
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NUMENIUS ARQUATA. 
[§ 4323. One—Arne, Dorset, 2 May, 1877. From Mr. T. 
M. Pike. 
This was received by me on the 5th of that month from Mr. Pike, of 
Wareham, with a letter dated the 3rd,in which he said :—“ Enclosed you 
will find an egg which is one of four taken on the 2nd instant, at about a 
mile to the westward of the place you landed at down the harbour last year. 
Thinking you might like to see one, I have forwarded you a specimen, which 
I hope will arrive without a smash.” Unfortunately it was very much 
shattered, and, as I at first thought, hopelessly ; but Mr. Salvin most skil- 
fully made a presentable ege of it again. It was unblown, and contained 
a nearly half-developed embryo, which I bottled and sent to Professor Parker, 
who expressed himself pleased therewith. The place at which my brother 
Edward, Mr. James Panton, and I, in company with Mr. Pike, landed in 1876 
was on the west or north-west side of Arne, in Poole Harbour ; and by “ a mile 
to the westward,” Mr. Pike must mean to the southward or south-westward. 
We had heard of Curlews breeding on Arne, and that gentleman kindly took 
us there from Wareham in his boat, on the 12th July in that year. My 
brother saw several birds—two at once. I thought I saw only one. Mr. Pike 
told us he had killed Curlews on the Wareham water, with pen-feathers 
hardly grown. Charles Orchard, a gumer and fisherman, said he caught 
a young Curlew, half-grown, there in 1875. About a week later, 18th July, 
my brother and I went to Arne by land, with Myr. Mansel-Pleydell, and 
having heard from the gamekeeper there that he had found a Curlew’s nest, 
he was sent for and he shewed them the spot on the heath, some way from 
the water and to the west or south-west of the Heronry. From it they got 
fragments of the hatched-out eggs, and a very characteristic feather, which 
we kept. They saw the birds and the gamekeeper said there might be 
twenty pairs of them breeding there, but this I greatly doubt. 
Mr. Pike sent another egg from the same nest to Mr. Mansel-Pleydell 
(cf. Birds of Dorsetshire, pp. xiii and 100), who kindly gave me the remains 
of it on the 21st July, 1877—in a hopeless condition, however. } 
[§ 4824. One.—Arne, 27 April, 1879. From Mr. J. W. Pike. 
This gentleman, brother of Mr. T. M. Pike (§ 4823), wrote to me on the 
24th of April, saying that another of his brothers and Charles Orchard, before 
mentioned, “found between them to-day a Curlew’s nest with four eggs in it 
in one of the bays along the Arne shore of the harbour. Orchard says you 
want to see a nest in the locality, and I shall be very much pleased to go 
down with you to the nest, or to any other part of the harbour.” TI replied 
that I was unfortunately unable to go, and therefore Mr. J. W. Pike wrote 
again on the 27th, saying that he had been to the nest that day, which he was 
kindly sending to me. It arrived next day, but was unhappily broken. The 
embryo, far less advanced than that of 1877, I reserved for Professor Parker ; 
and Mr. Salvin successfully mounted the shell upon another Curlew’s egg. 
Orchard, I believe, is the man who was the first to find the Long-billed 
Curlew breeding in Dorset, a discorery little expected. | 
