228 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



October. During the first of October they are very common in flocks and 

 singly among the lakes and streams ; a little later and the borders of these 

 situations are edged with ice and most of the birds leave for the south, but 

 some of the hardier ones betake themselves to the seashore, where they join 

 with Coues's sandpiper and remain as late as the 12th or 13th of the month. 



The southward migration separates into two w r idely divergent 

 main routes, with only stragglers between. One route is southward 

 along the Pacific coast and one southeastward along the west coast 

 of Hudson Bay, through the eastern Great Lakes, and to the coast 

 of New England and farther south. E. A. Preble (1902) saw them 

 on the w 7 est coast of Hudson Bay, just commencing the migration, 

 on July 19, and "present by thousands" south of Cape Eskimo 

 on August 3 to 13. It seems to be a rare bird in the interior Prov- 

 inces of Canada; my Manitoba correspondents have no fall records, 

 and Professor Row 7 an has only one for Alberta. Mr. Brewster 

 (1925) saw it regularly at Lake Umbagog, Maine, in October; and 

 W. E. Clyde Todd (1904) calls it common in Erie County, Pennsyl- 

 vania ; probably these two points represent the north and south limits 

 of the eastward route. Mr. Todd (1904) quotes from Samuel E. 

 Bacon's notes as follows : 



In former years extensive flights took place about the 1st of November, 

 upon which occasions bushels of them are said to have fallen to a single gun. 

 During these great flights the flocks were accustomed to follow the outside beach 

 of tbe peninsula (having presumably come directly across the lake) to its 

 southeastern extremity, thence crossing over to the sand beach east of the mouth 

 of Mill Creek, where, after having been sadly depleted by dozens of guns, they 

 would finally rise high in the air and pass southward over the mainland, flock 

 following flock, all day long. I know this by hearsay only, but am positive that 

 this is the bird that used to arrive in such numbers late in the fall. On October 

 29, 1897, I killed 53 of these birds out of two flocks, comprising in all perhaps 

 as many more, and this is the nearest approach to a flight that has occurred of 

 late years. 



The redbacks do not reach the Massachusetts coast in any num- 

 bers until the last week in September and the main flight comes in 

 October, with some lingering into November and a few remain all 

 winter occasionally. While with us they frequent the ocean beaches 

 and salt-water mud flats, where they associate with sanderlings, 

 ringnecks, peep, and turnstones. During high tides they rest on the 

 high, sandy beaches in the large flocks of other small w r aders. They 

 fly in close flocks, low over the water. The adults which come first, 

 have nearly completed the body molt when they arrive here. 



Winter. — It is only a short flight farther to their winter homes on 

 our southern coast. Dr. Louis B. Bishop (1901) found this to be 

 " the most abundant sandpiper " on Pea Island, North Carolina, in 

 winter. Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says that it usually arrives in South 

 Carolina about the first week in October and remains until May 25. 

 "With the exception of the western sandpiper, this species is the 



