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Sober gray curlews circled over his head, their long, funny bills thrust out straight as if to point the way for their bodies to follow and cried, "Kor-r-eck, kor-r-eck!" which means just what the meadow larks sang.
Out beyond the mouth of the harbour there are curlews and puffins on the lonely sea-washed crags; and in quiet weather there are more of the gulls seaward than up among the gardens. But they may certainly be regarded as the presiding genius of Fowey. The village of Fowey it calls itself a town runs along in a single street on the westward bank of the river.
And now came the warm days days in swift, sweet contrast to those just gone. Sun and shower banded the sky with triple arcs of promise. The robins arrived, a plump and saucy crew. Bent-bill curlews stalked about, uttering wild and mellow calls. The dwellers of the ground threw up fresh dirt around their burrows. The marsh violets opened pale lilac cups.
So the two young people travelled in a great loneliness of plovers and curlews and peewits, all singing and calling and whistling their hardest. They saw the glimmer of a herd's house or two, faint whitewashed dots on the brown, surface of the moor. But of living souls they met not one.
"Man!" said the Paymaster in English, looking whimsically at this childish expression of surprise. "Man! you're a queer callant too. Are there no curlews about Ladyfield that you should be in such a wonder at this one? Just a plain, long-nebbed, useless bird, not worth powder and shot, very douce in the plumage, and always at the same song like MacNicol the Major."
A good many Curlews are to be found in the Islands throughout the year, but I do not believe any of them breed there; I have seen them in Guernsey, Jethou, Herm and Alderney, all through the summer, but always in flocks on the mud and seaweed below high-water mark, whenever they can be there, searching for food, and quite as wild and wary as in the winter.
I've been so worried about you shut up here like this, and I've felt so choked myself with this one room. But up there I'll make you shut your eyes, and I'll tell you all about Ben Grief, and you'll think you're there. I'll make you hear the curlews and the gulls and see Jock and Tammas come in with the boats." "But on the roof!" he protested. "Whatever next?" "Oh, come and see.
How quiet it was! the quieter for the wrangling of rooks in the border elms, and for the low autumn wind that rustled in the hedgerows: and how full of light the sky, in spite of the soft bloomy clouds that had hung about all day, imbrowning the sunshine! far off in the valley doves were grieving, and over the reaped and glittering cornstalks curlews were flying and calling with their melancholy shrill wail, an echo from the sea, while small birds in flocks flew away twittering as he rode up, and settled again further on, and rose and settled again, always with a clatter of tiny wings.
Between the minute, straight, conical, tit-like beaks of the Laptasthenura a tit in appearance and habits and the extravagantly long, sword-shaped bill of Nasica, or the excessively attenuated, sickle-shaped organ in Xiphorynchus, the divergence is amazing, compared with what is found in other families; while between these two extremes there is a heterogeneous assemblage of birds with beaks like creepers, nuthatches, finches, tyrant-birds, woodpeckers, crows, and even curlews and ibises.
Water-turkeys, whose bodies are concealed in the bushes, run out their long necks to look at us, presenting the appearance of snakes darting from between the leaves; while curlews, herons, and many other birds are seen on the banks and flying across the river.
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