INTRODUCTION 



This is the ninth in a series of bulletins of the United States 

 National Museum on the life histories of North American birds. 



Previous numbers have been issued as follows : 



107. Life Histories of North American Diving Birds, August 

 1, 1919. 



113. Life Histories of North American Gulls and Terns, August 

 27, 1921. 



121. Life Histories of North American Petrels and Pelicans and 

 their Allies, October 19, 1922. 



126. Life Histories of North American Wild Fowl (part), May 

 25, 1923. 



130. Life Histories of North American Wild Fowl (part), June 

 27, 1925. 



135. Life Histories of North American Marsh Birds, March 11, 

 1927. 



142. Life Histories of North American Shore Birds (pt. 1), De- 

 cember 31, 1927. 



146. Life Histories of North American Shore Birds (pt. 2), March 

 24, 1929. 



The same general plan has been followed, as explained in previous 

 bulletins, and the same sources of information have been utilized. 

 The nomenclature of the new Check List of the American Ornithol- 

 ogists' Union has been followed, but it has seemed best to continue in 

 the same order of arrangement of families and species as given in the 

 old (1910) check list. 



This is the first group in which any considerable number of 

 subspecies have had to be treated. An attempt has been made to 

 give as full a life history as possible of the best-known subspecies 

 and to avoid duplication by writing briefly of the others and giv- 

 ing only the characters of the subspecies, its range, and any habits 

 peculiar to it. In many cases certain habits, probably common 

 to the species as a whole, have been recorded for only one subspecies ; 

 such habits are mentioned under the subspecies on which the obser- 

 vations were made. The distribution gives the range of the species 

 as a whole, with only rough outlines of the ranges of the subspecies, 

 which can not be accurately defined in many cases. 



The egg dates are the condensed results of a mass of records 

 taken from the data in a large number of the best egg collections 

 in the country, as well as from contributed field notes and from a 

 few published sources. They indicate the dates on which eggs have 



