SCOLOPACID^l. 373 



WHIMBREL, Numenius pliceopus. This bird, which 

 looks very like, and may easily be mistaken for, a 

 small Curlew, is a spring and autumn visitor to our 

 coast: it is, however, much less common in the 

 autumn than in the spring, and this appears to be 

 generally the case in other parts of England. In 

 the more northern parts, such as the Shetland and 

 Orkney Islands, it remains to breed. 



The nest is generally placed on heathy moors, be- 

 side some old stump or raised grassy lump of earth, 

 and is made of dry grasses or vegetable matter.* 



While on its visits to us the food of the Whimbrel 

 consists mostly of small shell- fish, which it picks 

 up on the mud of the sea-shore and of tidal rivers : of 

 these shell-fish it must devour a good many, as the 

 stomach of one I shot at Exmouth in the spring of 

 1868 contained two small crabs, nearly whole, one of 

 them measuring as much as three-quarters of an inch 

 across, and the other was nearly the same size ; 

 besides these two were the arms and legs and 

 pieces of the shells of various others, but nothing 

 else that I could detect : it does eat other shell-fish, 

 such as mussels, &c. When more inland it appears 

 to live upon snails, worms, beetles, grasshoppers, 

 crickets and other insects, as well as certain berries, 

 such as bilberries, whortleberries and crowberries.t 



* Meyer's ' British Birds,' vol. iv,, p. 199. 

 f Id., p. 199. 



