THE CUELEW. 
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 whaa'p, and another 
which sounds like wlieeaou, 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 Wilsoids 
^American Ornithology^ (vol. hi. 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 his 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. 
Mights hy 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 
