WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPER 189 



mg at times, to thousands of individuals, resorting to the mud flats left bare 

 by the receding tide. The mouth of the Koksoak and the cove to the westward 

 of it present excellent tracts of mud deposited in the little indentations. By 

 the middle of September these birds begin to depart to the south. Many of them 

 ascended the Koksoak and others doubtless followed the windings of the coast 

 down the Atlantic. I have seen numerous flocks over a hundred miles from 

 the mouth of the river as late as October 12th, and an occasional single bird 

 as late as the 20th of that month. I have observed, at the mouth of the 

 Koksoak River, flocks of these birds often numbering over a hundred individuals 

 suddenly appear from high in the air. These I suspected to be birds coming 

 from the regions to the northward of the strait for they always came from 

 the sea. 



Thence there is an overland flight to the Atlantic coast. Mr. 

 Brewster (1925) says: 



White-rumped sandpipers visit Lake Umbagog regularly and not infre- 

 quently, if rather sparingly, in autumn, appearing oftenest during the month 



of October. Those arriving early in the season are mostly adult birds which 



occur singly or two or three together ; those coming later are of various ages and 



sometimes in flocks containing as many as eight or nine members each, but 



rarely, if ever, a greater number. Bonaparte's sandpipers are hardy birds. 



They may be seen at the lake when its bordering marshes are stiff with 



frost. Once (October 26, 1S83) I found nine of them near the mouth of 



Cambridge River two days after the entire region had been covered with 



snow to a depth of 7 inches. 



This bird is a regular, but never an abundant, migrant on the coast 

 of Massachusetts in the fall. The vast numbers which Turner saw 

 in Ungava must seek some other route; the species is never abundant 

 in the interior in the fall and it seems to be rather rare on the 

 Atlantic coast south of New England; the natural inference is that 

 it migrates at sea from Maine or Nova Scotia directly to South 

 America or the West Indies. It is abundant at times in Bermuda. 



The adults begin to reach Cape Cod in August, but the main 

 flight comes in September, consisting partially of young birds; most 

 of the young birds come in October and some linger as late as Novem- 

 ber 10. While with us the white-rumped sandpiper frequents the 

 wet meadows and marshes near the shore, as well as the sand flats, 

 mud flats, and beaches, feeding at low tide singly or in small flocks 

 and usually associated with pectoral, semipalmated, or least sand- 

 pipers. During high tides, while the flats are covered, this species 

 may be seen on the high sandy beaches, mixed in with the vast 

 flocks of small shorebirds, sleeping, or resting, or preening their 

 plumage, while waiting for feeding time to come again ; if the wind 

 is blowing, all the birds are facing it; many are crouching on the 

 sand and others are standing on one leg with the bill tucked under 

 the scapulars. These flocks often contain hundreds and sometimes 

 thousands of birds, mainly semipalmated sandpipers, semipalmated 



