62 BIKDS OF NORFOLK. 



tion.* In the former case he has known the curlew fight 

 off the rook when suspiciously approaching its treasures; 

 on the other hand the rook, quietly perched on the trees, 

 watches the curlew leave her nest, and at once descends 

 to plunder it. The shepherds, when driving their 

 sheep on to the lands, always mark the spot where the 

 curlew rises, and, by her alertness or not in doing so, 

 judge whether the eggs are fresh or set upon. Nearly 

 all the eggs Mr. Dix has had brought to him at different 

 times have been taken in this way by the shepherds or 

 their lads, but when a single sheep has approached too 

 near to a nest he has seen the old bird nutter its wings, 

 and thus, by menacing attitudes, attempt to drive off 

 the intruder. 



Unless sought for, or come upon accidentally in their 

 wild haunts, these birds are but rarely heard or seen 

 during the day, but towards evening they become ex- 

 ceedingly clamorous, and as nocturnal feeders chiefly, 

 as evidenced by the large prominent eye,t their loud 



* On the 16th of May, 1867, Mr. Anthony Hamond, jun., pointed 

 out to me a nest with two eggs, placed within about fifty or sixty 

 yards of a plantation, which bordered one side of a large field at 

 "Westacre. The birds ran off on our approach, and were soon lost 

 sight of amongst the underwood. 



f Thompson, in his " Birds of Ireland " (vol. ii., p. 83), states 

 that a great plover, in the gardens of the Zoological Society, in 

 London, greatly interested him, on various occasions, by its always 

 remaining " fixed as a statue," so long as he had patience to return 

 its gaze, and this in whatever attitude it chanced to be when 

 his eye and the bird's first met. "I tried it," he says, "from 

 different sides of the aviary, and found its performance the same 

 from all. The earnestly fixed gaze of its large and prominent dark 

 eye had a very singular effect." And this, no doubt, is its habit in 

 a wild state, when, standing sentinel, as it were, on some slight 

 elevation, it looks out far and near over its desert home, since, 

 motionless as a statue, and in colour assimilating so closely to the 

 soil, it may easily escape detection, by even a good observer. The 

 chief peculiarity of this custom of the curlew is that the bird 



