THE CURLEW. 



193 



call and their flight, from what they usually are. They rose, 

 with quickly repeated beats of the wing, high into the air, and 

 repeated their soft note, courlieu, courlieu. Two other calls may 

 now occasionally be heard — the well-known whaap, and another 

 which sounds like wheeaou, whee-ou. When in the island of 

 Islay, in 1849, I could not learn that the curlew bred there ; 

 but it was said to do so annually in Jura. The habits, &c, of the 

 species at this period will be found very fully and picturesquely 

 described by Sir Wm. Jardine, in a note to his edition of Wilson's 

 ' American Ornithology' (vol. iii. p. 44). 



Mr. Hewitson observes : — " Whilst in Norway, we were much 

 amused with what appeared to us to be quite a new and unnoticed 

 habit amongst the Grallatores, or Wading-birds. * * * We 

 found it to be a practice by no means uncommon with the red- 

 shank and the greenshank, to settle upon trees ; and what sur- 

 prised us more than all, was to see the long-legged curlew alight, 

 as it frequently did, on the top of the highest trees of the pine- 

 forest, and to hear it, as it passed from tree to tree, utter its loud 

 clear whistle."* Mr. Geo. Matthews informed me, on Ins return 

 from Norway, that curlews were common during summer, and 

 generally in pairs, about Trondjeim, where they were usually seen 

 perched on the tops of the cabins of the peasantry. 



Flights by Night. — By night, throughout the month of June, 

 as well as in the day-time, the call of the curlew is heard over 

 the town of Belfast; at which period, old birds, accompanied 

 by their young, fly to the bay, and from it again, in a southerly 

 direction, probably to their nesting-places. Towards the end of 

 this month, some flocks have taken up their quarters in Belfast 

 Bay after the breeding season ; and in Strangford Lough I have 

 remarked them at the same period. But in spring and autumn 

 also, curlews may be heard calling at night when flying over the 

 town. On the 10th and 11th of March, 1834, they were noted 

 as heard loudly calling about twelve o'clock, as they had been 

 several times at an earlier hour during the preceding two weeks, 



* Eggs, Brit. Birds, p. 286. 

 VOL. II. O 



