Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/278

250 obtaining a sufficient food-supply by night. Each individual seems to whistle its loudest during this day-time flight to the feeding-grounds.

Their whistle has several variations soon after their arrival. Until May it is blurred, and often consists merely of a hoarse chuckle incessantly repeated for a short time. But about the first week in May their note is "curlew"; first short and indistinct, and then shrill and continued, the first short note being gradually dropped until only the full note remains. It has been suggested that their whistling by night is a call to inform one another of their whereabouts during cloudy weather. My own experience is that they are incomparably more noisy on moonlight nights than when the sky is overcast, and that therefore this reason is not the correct one. In this district the brood is generally hatched off by the commencement of June; but so well do the colourings of the young birds harmonise with those of the heathland that it is a matter of extreme difficulty to detect them. The eggs are usually laid in a slight hollow, sometimes on the open heath, but more generally on the upland "brecks." There is no material for the nest save a few of the previous year's dried bracken fronds, and search how one will, it is practically only by accident that the two eggs can be found. After the young ones are hatched it seems to be their rule to take care of themselves on the approach of danger; their parents doing likewise. It is at this time that one or other of the parent birds may occasionally be seen with head and neck extended, as in the beautiful life-group in the British Museum of Natural History. A remarkable fact of the authenticity of this nest and its surroundings struck me as a prehistoric archæologist. On the slab of heathland turf is a prehistoric flint flake, such as one may find on any of the local heaths. Locally the Stone Curlew is generally called the "Cullew," but is occasionally termed the "Sandpiper" or "Willie Reeve."

What effect the planting previously mentioned may have upon the Stone Curlew cannot yet be determined; but certainly the more heathland there is covered with trees the more circumscribed must their haunts be in future. One cannot but hope that this characteristic breckland bird, with its once-heard but never-forgotten whistle, will long continue to occupy the haunts of its extinct companion, the Great Bustard.