The Long-billed Curlew 



are wasting our own heritage and fouling our own fountains of interest; 

 robbing ourselves of joy in life, as well as driving the birds out to a 

 shoreless sea, and sunset. 



Those which have successfully wintered somewhere in the South 

 return to their interior breeding grounds along about the first of April. 

 At this season the Curlews move in large flocks, sometimes to the number 

 of a hundred or more, in continually shifting lines and A-shaped figures — 

 like the geese, in that some experienced leader maintains a position at the 

 front. Although wary and difficult of approach, save at the nesting 

 season, clumsy efforts at imitation of their quavering call will serve to 

 bring the birds up eagerly. Once within range, the Curlews are so over- 

 come with solicitude for their fallen comrades that they are exposed to 

 repeated attack until the hunter is satisfied. The "wagon-loads" reported 

 from the Columbia River Valley in an earlier day were, unfortunately, no 

 exaggeration, and the ranchers of the central West, who still occasionally 

 see a Curlew, may not realize how fearfully their ranks have been depleted. 



Save in the fall of the year when the birds are fat, the flesh is tough 

 and dry, and in many cases positively unpleasant. But if it tasted like 

 twisted artemisia fibers, frail human nature could hardly endure to see so 

 large a bird and such an "easy" mark flourish unmolested. Kill it, by 

 all means, and thus fulfil the destiny of budding manhood! The best 

 opportunity is afforded when the bird alights and pauses for a moment 

 with uplifted wings, a yacht of the desert come to anchor at the ancestral 

 roadstead. 



During the nesting season, the Sickle-bill throws caution to the 

 winds, and hurries forward to meet a prospective intruder with protesting 

 shrieks. If the newcomer be really curious as to the whereabouts of the 

 nest, both birds will circle and flap and hover and vociferate until one 

 might think that Bedlam had broken loose. The extraordinary bill of 

 this bird, sometimes eight or even nine inches in length, serves admirably 

 as a pair of chop-sticks, and will pick up a weevil as deftly as a Chinese a 

 grain of rice; but as a vehicle of emotion the vibrating mandibles are 

 deliciously absurd. Kerer er-er uk, ker er-er-er-uk comes torrentially and 

 unceasingly from the anxious throats until one feels forced to join in the 

 excitement, hysterically. Shoo! you yawping termigants, you! 



The nest is a mere grass-lined depression in the ground of pasture or 

 hillside, and may or may not have convenient access to brook or lake or 

 swamp. The eggs, normally four in number, may be found by the 20th 

 or even the 15th of April. They are the size of large hens' eggs, pale 

 buffy-brown or clay-colored, variously spotted and blotched with a rich 

 dark brown, and sometimes exhibiting traces of violet outcropping from 

 the deeper strata of the shell. Only one brood is raised in a season. 



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