CHAPTER VI 

 Migration Among Shore-birds 



SANDPIPERS, snipe, and plover, and the other 

 forms that comprise the group of shore-birds are 

 renowned among ornithologists for their powers of 

 flight and the distances that they cover in migration. 

 Approximately seventy of the two hundred or more 

 that are known nest in Arctic regions and are forced 

 to migrate each year. The distances they cover are 

 marvellous, as a number pass south to winter in the 

 southern hemisphere. One or two species, as 

 Peale's sandpiper {Aechmorhynchus parvirostris) of 

 the Tuamotu Archipelago in the South Pacific and 

 an allied species {Prosobonia leucoptera) of Tahiti, 

 — the latter now perhaps extinct — are, so far as 

 known, entirely sedentary. A few other forms of 

 sandpipers perform limited migrations, but such 

 appear unusual in an assemblage of species noted 

 for the extent of their semi-annual flights. As a 

 group the shore-birds cover greater distances in the 

 aggregate in their spring and autumn flights than 

 any other birds. 



The purple sandpiper {Arquatella m. maritima), 

 breeding in the northern hemisphere, in eastern 



