Wade: , Status of the Stone Curlew in Yorkshire. 13. 



of civilization has wiped it out. Here my first study of its 

 habits commenced. 



These, however, are memories of the past. Turning to. 

 the, present, there are but two locahties where the Stone Curlew, 

 persists in Yorkshire as a breeding species, viz., one in the North 

 Riding and the other on the Yorkshire Wolds. 



Of the former, Mr. Oxley Grabham wrote in the ' Naturalist ,' 

 for September 1897, with a photograph of ' the eggs of one of 

 the last two or three remaining pairs of the bird which breed 

 in Yorkshire.' The locality is an open secret in the North 

 Riding, and to my certain knowledge, eggs have been ' lifted ' 

 there more than once in recent years, but happily the birds 

 have increased, as Mr. Riley Fortune reported at the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union Protection Meeting on November 21st, 

 iqo8, that five pairs bred there this year, and another pair 

 in a locality close at hand. 



The second breeding place and last stronghold of the York-, 

 shire Stone Curlew is the Yorkshire Wolds, an entirely different, 

 ground from the flat, sandy warrens named previously. Rising 

 in a series of gentle undulations from the plain of Holderness, 

 on their Eastern bordei", the Wolds attain their greatest eleva- 

 tion on the west, north-west, and north edges, where they 

 drop suddenly into the Plain of York, the Vale of Pickering, 

 and the sea at Bempton Clift's. Traces of their former wildness; 

 remain, in the valleys carved out by ice, and showing sometimes 

 sides almost as cleanly cvit as when the glaciers left them ; 

 in the patches of thin soil here and there, too barren even for 

 modern agriculture to tackle, occasionally in land given over 

 to scanty heather, coarse grass, and whin bushes, the covering, 

 of the old sheep-walks. But for our present purpose, their^ 

 most salient feature is the broad sweeps of open country,_, 

 fields of one hundred acres or more, covered with a soil largely, 

 composed of chalk and flints, out of sight of the villages, which,, 

 as a rule, nestle in secluded hollows. Here the Stone Curlewi- 

 finds skulking ground enough, harmonising w,ith his own, 

 inconspicuous plumage, and space where his quick eye detects;, 

 the approach of an enemy afar off. and gives him opportunity, 

 to escape destruction. Here, in out-of-the-way corners,; 

 scattered in odd pairs wherever it can escape persecution, the. 

 bird leads a precarious existence. , , 



In the ' Birds of Yorkshire,' mention is made of forty birds, 

 being seen in a flock at Ganton in October 1874. The greatest, 



1909 January^ i.- 



