ON THE STATUS OF THE STONE CURLEW 

 IN YORKSHIRE.* 



E. W. WADE, M.B.O.l'. 



If scarcity be the touchstone of our interest in any bird, then 

 surely the Stone Curlew is the most interesting resident species 

 in Yorkshire, the northern limit of its breeding range in Britain. 

 Some 150 years ago, prior to the introduction of the present 

 system of agriculture on the high wolds and waste lands of the 

 county, when huge stretches of sandy warren and sheep-walk 

 existed, the bird must have been as common as it still is in some 

 parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, but at the present day it is almost 

 extinct in our county. This change of conditions may be traced 

 to the introduction of the turnip, by which alone the present 

 rotation of crops became possible. 



About the middle of the seventeenth century, the turnip 

 began to be used in agriculture, but it was not till after 1760, 

 when the growing demand for farm produce, owing to the 

 increase of population and wealth from manufactures, began 

 to have its effect upon prices, that the poorer soils were taken 

 into cultivation. This movement reached its culminating 

 point in the years 1795-1814, at the period of famine prices 

 produced by the wars following the French Re\'olution, during 

 which the enclosure of the wolds was carried on in earnest ; 

 and soils, which previously were thought too poor to pay for 

 cultivation, were brought under the plough. The present 

 order of rotation of crops on the wolds is : — 



I. — Turnips. 



2. — Barley. 



3. — Seeds, e.g.. Clover, Ryegrass, Sanfoin. 



4. — Oats. 

 Sir Mark Sykes, the father of the present Baronet, played 

 a great part in this movement. There are old men still living 

 on the wolds who can remember the ploughing up of some of 

 the warrens, which they date sixty-three years back, and garnish 

 their tale with stories of poaching escapades of the old days, 

 and the last of such lands devoted to the cultivation of the 

 rabbit was broken up within the last ten years only. The 

 father of Ned Hodgson, of Bempton, lived at a time when open 



* Read at a recent meetiTiy of the Vertebrate Section of the Yorkshire 

 Naturalists' Union. 



igoy January i. 



