I2 4 
Nesting Habits of the Stone Curlew. 
the nest showed no variation except in the length of the return 
run which sometimes commenced 300 yards away, and at 
the fourth attempt she became distinctly more suspicious. 
The fact of her quicker return when the keeper had left me 
showed a certain amount of reasoning power, but as regards 
the management of the eggs, she showed none, for one of them 
which had rolled into a corner of the depression in which she 
sat, had been left stone-cold and unincubated, while the other 
had a young one chipping out. In this respect she resembled 
the guillemot, which leaves any egg that rolls a few inches 
away into a slight crevice from which the bird could easily 
extricate it. Two days later the young curlew had hatched 
out and gone, while the cold egg remained behind. 
The most conspicuous features of the birds were the yellow 
cere and staring yellow iris, and the light brown cheek which 
seemed to stand out from the head. The colours on the head 
of the cock bird appeared more pronounced than on that of the 
hen. 
The second attempt at photographing the bird was made on 
the 26th May, with a shelter tent. The nest was close to a 
wire fence which had been repaired early in May, and the bird 
had been kept off the eggs thereby for the greater part of 
two days. The shelter-tent was placed three feet from the 
nest and half-height only, on 25th May, and on 26th, at 
10-15 a.m., the keeper put me into the tent. It was a swel- 
tering hot day. I sat down with my watch expecting to have 
to wait fifteen minutes, but in five minutes heard a throaty 
clucking note like that of a brooding hen, and looking through 
one of the peep-holes saw the bird sitting three feet from me, 
her great yellow irides staring apparently at me, and her 
mouth wide open, panting from the heat. So close did she 
sit. that to obtain a photograph of her standing up, I had to 
tap on the side of the tent, and in twenty minutes I had 
fired off all my plates, and was packing up the tent. As I 
found the eggs to be addled, I removed them, in kindness to 
the bird, but her heart-rending cries when I had walked 
300 yards away, resembling very much the alarm note of the 
common curlew, made me regret that I had not left her to 
her futile maternal cares. No doubt this bird’s tameness 
was due to the fact that the keeper’s duties often led him 
across the field, and individual birds show different degrees of 
shyness. Here again, in regard to the condition of the eggs, 
an utter want of reasoning power was apparent. The bird 
must have been sitting three weeks on addled eggs, becoming 
more closely attached to them as the days passed by. The 
brooding note, I think, has not been mentioned by previous 
writers. Possibly it might have been due to the long period 
of incubation. 
Naturalist, 
