AND NMGHBOURHOOD. 101 



alight in our district, in fact I have only seen one on 

 the ground near Lilford, and am only acquainted 

 with one capture of this species in the vicinity, 

 though several have been recorded from other parts 

 of Northamptonshire. My attention has often been 

 attracted in the three above-mentioned months by 

 the well-known cry of the Curlew passing overhead, 

 but I have never seen more than three together 

 in our county, and in the great majority of cases 

 have found that the said cry proceeded from a 

 solitary bird. The Curlew nests on open moorlands 

 in several of the English, and most of the Scotch 

 counties, as well as on all the great bogs of Ireland 

 and the uncultivated districts of Wales ; the nest 

 is very slight, generally composed of a few dry stems 

 of rushes and coarse grass, and almost always well 

 concealed ; the eggs are generally four in number, 

 very large for the size of the bird, of a dingy green 

 with brown blotches and spots ; the young birds 

 leave the nest about the end of May, and may often 

 be found almost full-grown, but unable to fly, in July 

 and sometimes even as late as the beginning of 

 August, The parents, at other seasons the most 

 wary of birds, will occasionally make direct attacks 

 on man or dog who may intrude upon their nurseries, 

 but generally content themselves with flying scream- 

 ing around at a safe distance. In my early shooting- 

 days it happened that I was staying, in July, in 

 a village in South Wales near which a single pair of 

 Grouse had hatched their brood on a wide stretch of 

 unpreserved and much-poached mountain moorland ; 

 with a view to finding these Grouse early on the 

 12th August, I was in the habit of going up to 

 the spot where they had been hatched, once or 



