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Our old friend, the black and white red-bill, or oyster-catcher, was in readiness to greet us, accompanied by a few families of sanderlings, two or three batches of grey plovers, and a couple of small curlews. Crossing the beach, a line of reddish sandstone cliffs, twelve feet in height, was ascended, and found to face a bank of sand, held together by a sort of coarse spinifex.
Wide and dreary levels of sand, some four or five feet lower than the town, and flooded by high tides; the only vegetation a scanty, dingy gray, brittle, crackling growth, bitter sandworts and the like; over and through which the abominable tawny sand-crabs are constantly executing diabolic waltzes on the tips of their eight legs, vanishing into the ground like imps as you approach; curlews start from behind the loose drifts of sand and float away with heartbroken cries seaward; little sandpipers twitter plaintively, running through the weeds; and great, sulky, gray cranes droop their motionless heads over the still salt pools along the shore.
Save for the weird rush of the stream and the kookaburras' goodnight, all is still, with a mighty far-reaching stillness which can be felt. Now the curlews are beginning their wild moaning cry. From the rifts in the dark lone ranges, far down the river, it comes like a hunted spirit until it makes me feel At this point I said, "Bah! I'm mad to write to Everard Grey like this.
The road ran over sweeps of moorland where curlews wailed, and into lowland pastures dotted with very white, very vocal lambs. The young grass had the warm fragrance of new milk. As he went he munched his buns, for he had resolved to have no plethoric midday meal, and presently he found the burnside nook of his fancy, and halted to smoke.
The land Fowls are Bustards, Eagles, Hawks, Crows, such as we have in England, Cockatoes of 2 sorts, White and Brown, very beautiful Birds of the Parrot kind, such as Lorryquets, etc., Pidgeons, Doves, Quails, and several sorts of smaller birds. The Sea and Water Fowls are Herons, Boobies, Noddies, Guls, Curlews, Ducks, Pelicans, etc., and when Mr. Banks and Mr.
We took cushions and things, and it was great fun; but Keziah reported us, and we were never allowed to do it again." They sat in the pony-carriage on the dam embankment, gazing silently. A flock of wildfowl had been scared away by their approach, and now not a wing, not an eye was near. At a great distance curlews wailed, only to make the stillness and solitude more exquisite, more profound.
All of the boatmen also, with whom I have been about at various times, agree that the Curlews do not breed in the Islands, though they are quite aware that they remain throughout the year, and as many of them, in spite of the Guernsey Bird Act, are great robbers of the eggs of the Gulls, Puffins, and Oystercatchers, all of which they know well, they would hardly miss such a fine mouthful as the egg of the Curlew if it was to be found.
In front of the house rose Lashnagar, the home of desolation, a billowing waste of sand rising to about a thousand feet at the crest. Curlews called and sea-gulls screamed over Lashnagar; heather grew upon it, purple and olive-green; fennel and cooch and henbane sprang side by side with dwarfed stink-nettles, stunted by the salt sand in which they were rooted.
Orders flew from Bucks like curlews, for it was more essential than ever to open the hill speedily. The private car was run across the Hog's Back, and the news sent to the rotary crew with injunctions to push with all effort as far at least as the mine switch, that help might be sent out on the spur to meet the party on the climb.
The forests of Borneo harbour more than 450 species of birds, many of them being of gorgeous colouring or strange and beautiful forms; especially noteworthy are many hawks, owls, and eagles, fly-catchers, spider-hunters, sun-birds, broad-bills, nightjars, orioles, miners, pigeons, kingfishers, hornbills, trojans, magpies, jays, crows, partridges, pheasants, herons, bitterns, snipes, plovers, Curlews, and sandpipers.
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