The nest is often placed at some distance from the water. The four eggs are of a warm stone-colour, spotted with brown and blotched with purplish grey.
Whimbrel.
Numenius phæopus.
Crown dark brown, with broad pale streak down the middle; upper parts like the curlew, but darker; axillaries white barred with brown. Length of female, eighteen inches.
If it were our belief that the happiness of birds consisted in the degree of interest they, as species, excite in us, it could be said that the whimbrel suffers from his resemblance to the curlew. He is in form and colouring a lesser curlew with a less strongly marked individuality; ‘half-curlew’ and ‘jack-curlew,’ his two vernacular names, really imply that he is only half as attractive as the bigger bird. With us he is best known as an autumn and spring visitor, breeding only in the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The migration eastwards begins at the end of July, and the birds continue to pass until September, flying rapidly and at a great height. Of the flocks that alight to rest and feed on our coasts, a few birds remain through the winter. The return migration begins in April, but the greatest number of the migrants appear on our coasts about the beginning of May. On account of their punctuality, the whimbrel is known in some districts as the ‘May bird.’ In language and habits they resemble curlews, but have shriller voices, a more rapid flight, are not so excessively shy, and do not confine themselves so exclusively to the sand-flats when feeding. Grass-grown saltings, low meadows, and pasture-lands in the neighbourhood of the sea are visited by them. The nest is placed on moors and heaths not far removed from the shore. A slight hollow among the heather or coarse grass is lined with dead stems and leaves, and four eggs are laid, in colour like those of the curlew, but differing in size. During the breeding season the whimbrels are extremely pugnacious, and attack the skuas, lesser black-backed gulls, and other egg-stealing species, and chase them from their nesting-ground with shrill, angry cries.
Common Curlew.
Numenius arquata.
General plumage reddish ash mottled with dusky spots; belly nearly white, with dusky streaks; rump and tail-coverts white; tail-feathers barred with dark brown. Length of the female, which is the larger, twenty-one to twenty-six inches.
The curlew is the largest of its order in the British Islands; even the large woodcock looks small besides him, and among diminutive stints and sandpipers he is a veritable giant. An imperfect ibis in figure, in a pale sandy brown dress with dusky mottlings, he is, perhaps, the least handsome of the Limicolæ; in character he is one of the most interesting. What marvellously keen senses, what unfailing wariness and alertness must this large, inland-breeding species possess to keep its hold on existence in so many localities in this populous country in spite of incessant persecution! Most vigilant of birds, he is not vigilant on his own account only. He is the unsleeping sentinel of all the wild creatures that are pursued by man, warning them of danger with piercing cries that none fail to understand. The redshank, greenshank, and many other species, in this and other orders, are equally vociferous in the presence of danger, and their warnings are as promptly obeyed by all wild creatures that live with or near them; but a curious feature about the curlew is that he appears to take an intelligent interest in the welfare of beings not of his own species, and that he is distressed if they fail to act on his signal. In Yarrell’s ‘British Birds’ (4th edit. vol. iii.) Howard Saunders gives a striking instance of this characteristic. He describes seeing one of these birds, ‘after shrieking wildly over the head of a sleeping seal, swoop down, and apparently flick with its wings the unsuspecting animal, upon which the stalker was just raising his rifle.’ This, to my mind, is a far more wonderful instance of the help-giving instinct in the lower animals than that related by Edwards of Banff, in which a number of terns swooped down upon one of their number which he had wounded and was pursuing, and, taking its wings in their beaks, raised it, and bore it away out to sea beyond his reach. The case of the curlew reminds us rather of the action of the rhinoceros-bird in waking the rhinoceros on the appearance of an enemy; but between curlew and seal there is no such thing as commensalism, and no tie, excepting the common knowledge that they are living creatures, and must fly for life at the approach of man, their deadliest enemy, on account of his superior cunning and his power to slay them at long distances.
