80 W. H. Workman—Two Interesting Waders


TWO INTERESTING WADERS


By W. H. Workman


In the middle of June a friend gave me a pair of young Curlew

(Numenius arquata) which he had caught on his moor. They were

pretty well fledged but unable to fly and with quite short beaks.

Naturally I was most anxious to keep them alive and well. I thought

the best way would be to put them into a largish aviary where I have

three beautiful Black-tailed Godwits, my idea being that the Godwits,

which are quite like Curlew with the beak turned slightly up instead

of down, would soon teach them where to find their food. This happily

proved to be correct and instead of finding two dead Curlew I found

them growing rapidly and now they are fully adult with curved beaks.


I feed them on a staple diet from a glass bowl containing Spillers

biscuit meal mixed with one-third boiled rice well scalded with

boiling water. Two or three times a week they get raw heart cut up

fine and mixed through the scalded meal. Besides this they get a smaller

bowl of bread and milk. This they are very fond of and seem to go for

it before the biscuit, but both are finished by the morning. For live food

I give occasionally a few earthworms and also now and then some

mealworms. They have plenty of clean water in the form of a little

shallow pond in which they delight to wade.


About August they started to call and it is very pleasant when

one is awake at night to hear their weird and lonely whistle, now and

again being answered by some wild Curlew passing overhead. I do

hope my neighbours listen to their call with the same pleasure that

I do, wafting one back to the wild moorland mountains where the

Curlew spend their breeding season, but perhaps they just turn round

on their pillows and say to themselves, “ I wish Workman would take

his- birds out of this.” Who knows ? I, for one, never inquire.


Like misfortunes, blessings never come singly and the same kind

friend very shortly afterwards brought me a pair of fledgeling Bing

Plovers (Charadrius Jiiaticula) from Strangford Lough, perfect little

birds nearly able to fly. Well, I thought to myself, there is little hope

for these Curlew are all very well, there is something to work on,

but these little mites, what a hope. However, there they were and



