A GREAT COWARD. 
121 
the Mavis and the Merle. But it is in vain to pursue the birds, for they 
are the males ; and at this season you will find them fully as shy as 
they were in winter on the sea shore. Some weeks hence, when 
the young are abroad, the females, and even the males, will flutter 
around you, if you approach the spot where their unfledged brood be 
concealed among the herbage, and will attempt by feigning distress 
to lead you into a vain pursuit. 
At all seasons this bird appears to be extremely sliy and 
suspicious, so much so that, unless by stratagem or accident, 
a successful shot at it can seldom be obtained. In the 
Hebrides the saying is rife, that to kill seven Curlews is 
enough for a lifetime. 
In an old play we are invited — 
To the wild northern bog, the Curlew's haunt; 
And Charlotte Smith thus describes the home of the 
bird : — 
On fields that shew 
As angry heaven had rained sterility, 
Stony and cold, and hostile to the plough, 
Where clamouring loud tf.e evening Curlew runs 
And drops her spotted eggs among the flints. 
According to a recent w^riter in * Chambers's Journal,* 
who furnishes some pleasant * Wayside Notes ' on British 
Birds, this species is a great coward : — 
The size of birds, like that of men, is evidently no criterion of 
courage : considerably larger than either the Eook or Lapwing, the 
Curlew will turn its tail on them both. Possessing great swiftness 
and power of wing in flight, the Curlew trusts more to that than to 
the power of the long lance-like bill, which would give it so much 
advantage in a duel, where the ceremony of measuring the weapons 
was dispensed with. It puts that * power of beak ' to a much plea- 
santer use, however, than fighting with its neighbour. When leaving 
the shores of the sea in spring, the Curlew and its mate go far among 
the wild hills and moors for breeding purposes. Here they love to 
tune their long pipes, and * gaur their skirl,' waking the slumbering 
echoes of tlie silent glens with their melodious piping; as if, being 
birds of a highly poetic temperament, they were determined to per- 
form the neglected duties of those piping shepherds, so plentiful in 
pastoral poems, and so prosaically rare in pastoral life. 
The ideal shepherd of plays and poems, indeed, who is always sup- 
posed to be pleasantly piping to his listening flock, or warbling his 
ditty (a four or six part madrigal) to his swefet shepherdess — bears 
