98 MY LIFE AS A NATURALIST 



runner. It adopts an outstretched, squatting posture, when 

 wishing to conceal itself, and rarely takes to flight. Catching a 

 young one only a few hours old, it was placed on a handkerchief, 

 and photographed successfully in that position for the purpose 

 of showing the habit of the young bird, as well as the adult, of 

 crouching and remaining still. 1 Apparently the young Stone 

 Curlew was unconscious of the fact that it was easily observable 

 on the white handkerchief, and thus defeated the object it had in 

 view, though, under ordinary conditions, its concealment would 

 be satisfactorily effected. To what is this early knowledge of 

 the parental method of protection adopted by the young Stone 

 Curlew to be attributed ? Being only a few hours old, I take 

 it the youngster, whose interesting precautions I have narrated, 

 inherited the habit from its parents, as a young Partridge, even 

 when just out of the egg, takes cover among herbage, or a baby 

 Moorhen plunges, when disturbed, from its rush nest into the 

 water, and swims at once with ease and facility. 



Most Wading birds Sandpipers, Shanks, Godwits, Snipe, 

 Stints, and their kin have long, straight beaks, admirably 

 adapted for probing for food, but why has the Curlew-Sandpiper 

 (Tringa ferruginea) a curved beak like the Curlew (Numenius 

 arquata) ? Why also has the Curlew a long, curved beak, while 

 the Avocet (Recurvirostra avocetta) has its beak, as a wag at one 

 of our provincial museums remarked, " turned the wrong way 

 up," or, to be more accurate, acutely recurved towards the 

 extremity ? The long, straight beak seems to serve the many 

 other species I have mentioned quite well. Why should there 

 be these exceptions to the rule ? 



The immense colonies of Guillemots (Uria troUle) around our 

 coast are well known to bird students, as also the fact that each 

 pair of birds has only one pear-shaped egg, which is placed on 

 the bare rock without any attempt at building a nest. It is 

 stated and doubtless with some degree of truth that no two 

 Guillemots' eggs produced by different birds are ever exactly 

 alike, so that each pair of birds shall be able to distinguish their 

 own egg among the large colonies that are gathered together. 

 But where so many eggs are laid quite close together, and in 

 many types there is not, in reality, such a great diversity of colour 

 or marking, must there not be developed in this species some 

 acute sense of recognition of which we humans are not 

 cognisant ? 



1 See also Chapter IV, 



