248 THE STONE-CURLEW 



may have been the cause of this late return to the warrens. These 

 large flights form a most inspiring sight. The flock just mentioned, the 

 largest I have ever seen, must have consisted of two hundred birds ; 

 they were flying low down, not more than twenty to thirty feet from 

 the ground, and while the majority of them were a little beyond me, 

 many passed directly over my head. They are always much quieter on 

 their return flight than in the evening, but still not absolutely silent, 

 and it was their voices, a wail here and there, that warned me they 

 were coming, some time before I saw the first birds emerge phantom- 

 like from the fog. 



The nightly visits of the stone-curlew to the marshes are, I think, 

 as much for drink as for food. Food to their taste there is in plenty 

 on the warrens and fallows, but no water ; for that they must go to 

 the lower land. They eat quantities of grasshoppers, earwigs, beetles, 

 caterpillars, and various other insects. Mr. Selous has seen them in 

 the early evening chasing and catching moths, and probably other 

 insects that fly near the ground. 1 They also eat worms, slugs, and 

 mice, and when caught in traps set for vermin on the fallows they 

 have been known to disgorge frogs. 2 I have been told by an 

 observant gamekeeper, who has lived practically all his life in their 

 haunts, that they eat the larvae of Euchdia jacobcece, the cinnabar 

 moth, and he added that he did not think any other bird did so. 

 This caterpillar is generally avoided by birds, and is furnished with 

 what are known as warning colours. It swarms on the ragwort which 

 grows abundantly on many of the fallows. The same keeper told 

 me that he had shot a stone-curlew in the act of killing a young 

 pheasant. Other keepers whom I have interrogated as to this latter 

 statement have corroborated it. 3 



Attempts to syllable the cries and songs of birds are somewhat 

 futile, and convey but a poor impression of the real thing. Various 



1 Bird Watching, p. 6 et seq. 



* Stevenson, Birds of Norfolk, vol. ii. p. 63. 



3 This habit must be taken, however, as very exceptional. 



