The OoLOGiST. 



Vol. XXVI. No. 6. 



Alb[ON, N. Y. June 15, 1909. 



Whole No. 263 



THE LURE OF THE CURLEW. 



P. M. Silloway, Lewiston, Mont. 



The Long-billed Curlew is a game 

 old denizen of the pathless prairies of 

 the northwest. He is no friend of ci- 

 vilization, and agriculture is surely 

 pushing him ahead of its resistless 

 march. Ever at home among the 

 great cattle and sheep ranges of this 

 region, the Curlew is seeing the vast 

 stretches of prairie rapidly transform- 

 ed by irrigation projects and the 

 steam plow, and at no distant day the 

 immense area of nesting domain will 

 no more resound with the Curlew's 

 mellow whistle or his harsh cackle. 



The finding of a Curlew's nest is 

 one of the fine arts. Not the mere 

 stumbling upon a nest, for the cow- 

 boy or the rancher often does that; 

 but the location of a nest on a stretch 

 of prairie when the bird gives indica- 

 tion that it is nesting somewhere with- 

 in a mile of the trespasser. In my ex- 

 perience on the prairies of central 

 Montana, it has given me the keen- 

 est pleasure to follow the movements 

 of any male Curlew jealously guard- 

 ing the vicinity of its home, and thus 

 eventually to fiush his better half 

 zealously hovering her treasures de- 

 spite the commotion in the neighbor 

 hood. And there is a commotion, for 

 frequently in the last stages of the 

 quest as many as a dozen other Cur- 

 lews will join in the outcry, all pro- 

 testing with angry cackling and swoop- 

 ing about the intruder to mislead him 

 and baffle him in the search. All the 

 while, however, the female of the pair 



concerned in the transaction will be 

 sitting sedulously upon the nest, as if 

 she knew that the male were fully 

 equal to the task of caring for the in- 

 terests of the household. He who 

 chooses may hunt the deer, but for 

 genuine blood-tinkling sport, give me 

 the trailing down of a Curlew's nest 

 from the first angry cackling of the 

 male to the ultimate flushing of the 

 female from her eggs.. 



To me it appears impossible that a 

 novice, cut purposely to find a nest of 

 the Curlew, should stumble upon one; 

 a cowboy, riding straight on or here 

 and there about his business, will 

 frequently chance on a nest; or some 

 unfeeling stroller of the prairie, re- 

 gardless of nature's sights and sounds; 

 but an ornithologist, never; for the 

 latter, observing the actions of the 

 male in guarding his domain, would 

 have scarcely a chance in a thousand 

 of not being mislead. Once the meth- 

 ods of the Curlew in manifesting its 

 displeasure and anger are mastered 

 by the bird watcher, however, the Cur- 

 lew's case becomes hopeless, for soon- 

 er or later the collector will stand 

 beside the cluster of four large hand- 

 some eggs. 



In a recent collecting season I was 

 afield one Saturday afternoon in the 

 second week of May, on the lookout 

 for Curlews. I was descending a long- 

 knoll of gentle slope, when a Curlew 

 flapped into the neighborhood and set- 

 tled on the ground near me, uttering 

 angry cacklings and feeding impa- 

 tiently on any luckless grasshoppers 

 that might be lurking near him in the 



