SCOLOPACID^E. 197 



near the fresh-water lakes of which islands it makes its nest. 

 In his ' Ornithologist's Guide to the Islands of Orkney and 

 Shetland/ Mr. Dunn records having found the nests of these 

 birds in Orkney ; he says : " I have never seen this bird in 

 Shetland. I got several in Orkney, but it is not plentiful. 

 It arrives in the month of July, and departs on the ap- 

 proach of winter. It breeds in August, and builds its nest 

 in swampy situations, close to the edge of the water ; some- 

 times on small green islands in the middle of the lakes. 

 The places where I procured their eggs and found the birds 

 most numerous, are in a small sheet of water three or four 

 miles from the lighthouse of Sanda, a lake near Nunse 

 Castle in Westra, and at Sandwick, near Stromness." It 

 lays four eggs, in size and colour not very unlike those of 

 the last species, of a pale yellowish -green thickly marked 

 with grey and brown approaching to black. 



THE COMMON CURLEW. Numenms arquata. The Cur- 

 lews are distributed over the world, though most abundant in 

 temperate regions ; they are chiefly maritime, except during 

 the season of incubation, when they retire inland; and 

 amidst the tracts which they inhabit, their notes are often 

 the only interruption to the stillness of those barren wastes. 

 The present species is not uncommon along our shores, 



