Anglesey 



how the bill of the curlew, which, upon this 

 showing, must once have been straight in the adult 

 also, in the course of time acquired its present 

 curved form. Dressed in sober greys and browns, 

 relieved only by the white of the belly, rump, and 

 tail coverts, the curlew is less pleasing in its garb 

 than singular in its form. Nor is there much to 

 commend it in its carriage as it moves with staid 

 gait about the shore, searching the weeds and rock- 

 strewn sands newly washed by the tide. If possible, 

 the curlew is even more wary than the heron, and it 

 is rarely that a near view may be had of him. His 

 note, too, is not for over-sensitive ears. Wherein, 

 then, lies the singular charm of this bird for bird- 

 lovers bird-lovers, I had almost written, of the less 

 perfunctory kind ? Is it not that they, too, know 

 something of that spirit of aloofness which possesses 

 the curlew a bird more than ordinarily shy of the 

 presence of man ? When he rises from the moor, 

 calling to his fellows to be gone, one seems to hear 

 the sound of the distant sea to which they go ; when 

 he moves quietly about the tidal flats, one has a 

 sense of the ample solitude of unfrequented moors 

 to which he will soon return. And when that 

 V-shaped column of birds passes high in air upon 

 its distant quest, now rigidly regular, now dissolving 

 to re-form as at a word of command, the old Adam 

 of wandering stirs in the blood ; for the nomad is 

 not yet dead in man, if, indeed, it have not been 

 quickened into desperate vitality in this age of 



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