Bygone birding: 'Nature's own sadness seems to speak in the 'voice of Stone-curlews'

                                                 

Stone-curlews in nuptial pose

 

Extract from his commentary on Stone-curlews in the book, Bird Watching (1901), by Edmund Selous (1857-1934)

During the day, Stone-curlews are idle and lethargic - sitting about, dozing or sleeping.

But as the air cools and the shadows fall, they rouse into a glad activity, and, coming down and spreading themselves over the wide space of the warrens, they begin to run excitedly about.

They raise and waving their wings, leaping into the air and often making little flights, or rather flittings, over the ground as a part of the disport. 

Over the warrens, their plaintive, wailing notes are heard - notes that seem a part of the deepening gloom and sad sky.

Nature's own sadness seems to speak in the voice of these birds. 

They swell and subside and swell again as they are caught up and repeated in different places from one bird to another and often swell into a full chorus of several together. 

Deeper now fall the shadows and light thickens until there are  only "dreary gleams about the moorland".

Now here, now there, the wings are flung up showing the lighter coloured inner surface  until gradually first one and then another, or by twos or threes or fours, the birds fly off into the night, wailing as they go. 

But this note on the wing is not the same as that uttered while running over the ground. 

The ground-note is much more drawn out, and a sort of long, wailing twitter  - called the "clamour" - often precedes and leads up to the final wail. 

In the air, it comes just as a wail without this preliminary. But it must not be supposed that all the birds perform these antics simultaneously.

If they did, the effect would be more striking, but it is, generally, only a few at a time over a wide space, or, at most, some two or three together.