though their mournful cries answer each other like two sad complaining souls, yet they keep apart, and, on settling, do not run to each other. From the drear slope of a hill a wail goes up, and from another hill, or the cheerless hollow between, the sad sound is answered. Or one will fly wailing whilst the other wails and sits, or the two will follow each other along the ground, but without coming very near. Thus, in a kind of sad, solitary communion, they wail and lament, and so exactly is each the counterpart of the other, one might think that the prophet Jeremiah had been turned into a bird, which had subsequently flown asunder.
In flight the wings are for the most part constantly quivered, with a quick and somewhat tremulous motion, but sometimes the bird will glide with them outstretched, and not moving, just over the ground, before it alights, or make a steep-down descent holding them set in this manner, and so settle. There is also a trick or mannerism of flight which is graceful, and may be of a nuptial character. Rising to a certain height on quivering wings, they sink down, holding them extended and motionless. After but a short descent, they rise again in the same quivering way, and so continue for a greater or lesser space of time.
The note which they utter is, first, a melancholy "too-ee, too-ee, too-ee," then a much louder and sharper "wi-wi, wi-wi, wi-wi" (i as in "with"), and there are various other ones, one of which—if memory did not trick me—is just, or very, like a note which is but seldom heard of the great plover, "Tu—whi, whi, whi, whi, whi." This bird is itself a curlew, so that
