108 BIRDS OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 



spring* and returning early in August, and ccasion- 

 ally in Julyf. Are extremely numerous in the 

 autumn on the Humber foreshore, where they may 

 be found scattered over the " muds/' not in flocks, but 

 four or five together. At this time, from their com- 

 parative tameness, many are shot. Later in the 

 season they pack together and become excessively 

 wild and wary. The flocks now each morning at 

 day-break leave the coast and seek the interior, 

 where they feed throughout the day, in company 

 with the Common and Brown-headed Gulls, in the 

 1 arge sheep-walks on our ' f wolds. v In the dry autumn 

 of 1870, a flock numbering about a couple of hundred 

 passed each morning at sunrise over this village, re- 

 turning by the same line, but in small parties and 

 detachments, between four and five o'clock in the 

 afternoon, to the mud flats or, at high water, land 

 immediately contiguous to the coast. 



A considerable proportion of these autumn birds 

 leave us and go further south to wards the end of the 



* In the cold wet summer of 1871, considerable numbers of 

 old Curlews remained in the vicinity of the Huraber throughout 

 the summer months. 



t The first returning after the breeding-season are usually very 

 large and light-coloured birds, which resort to the grass lands in 

 the marshes. They are always much shyer and wilder than the 

 small family parties which later in the season appear on the 

 " flats." I have, however, occasionally succeeded in shooting 

 them by lying concealed in the corn-fields adjoining the pastures 

 they frequent. These are doubtless the " Great Harvest Curlews" 

 alluded to by Mr. Stevenson ('Birds of Norfolk/ vol. ii.p. 198). 



