122 
A WAILING CRT. 
no more resemblance to the shepherd of real life than the shrill treble 
of the Curlew does to the sonorous bass of the Moorcock, as he rises 
on the wing, or his deep chick, cluck, cluck, as he drops again among 
the heather. The trayeller through such weary wilds as the Curlew 
loves in summer, may v.'cll, at first, feel startled into the belief that 
he has * fallen among thieves,' when he hears, apparently within a 
few yards, a loud clear whistle, repeated presently in the same tone, 
at a considerable distance, like the signal of some concealed banditti. 
Agreeable is his relief to find it is only the Curlew calling to its dis- 
tant mate, which it presently flies off to join, and whilst sailing 
swiftly through the air, treats him to a solo on its long-curved pipe, 
beginning in a low key, and gradually swelling into a * linked sweet- 
ness long drawn out.' 
One cry peculiar to this bird sounds like corlieu^ovcourlie) 
hence its common English as well as French name ; it is a 
wild plaintive sound, and coming to our ears as it sometime 
did while a flock of these partial migrants w^as resting 
on the marshes by the Medway, amid the stillness of night, 
it had a singularly thrilling eflect. One Saturday evening 
in the month of August 1857, we remember to have heard 
the sad wailing cry of these birds on the wing, which ap- 
peared to fill the air above and around us ; amid the gather- 
ing gloom it seemed like the wail of lost spirits. But on 
another occasion, the effect of the sound was greatly 
heightened by being heard during a storm, when, as a local 
paper reported, * Flocks of Curlews, apparently alarmed at 
the raging of the elements, filled the air with their cries, 
and from the noise and the space over which it extended,^ 
there must have been hundreds of these birds on the wing.' 
Amid the wild and grand mountain scenery of his native 
land, to the Scotchman the shrill screaming cry of this bird 
may sound like an utterance of the spirit of the solitude. 
Burns says: — * I never hear the loud solitary whistle of 
the Curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence 
of a troojD of Grey Plovers in an autumnal evening, without 
feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion 
or poesy.' 
We scarcely like the simile vrith which Mant concludes 
his picture of Curlew-life ; as v^e cannot imagine the cry 
of a flock of Curlews to resemble, under any circum- 
stances, that of a pack of hounds : — 
