262 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Sound and the Yukon mouth the 1st of Octoher. Although it is not recorded 

 from the Seal and Aleutian Islands, I have seen the bird at St. Lawrence 

 Island, south of Bering Straits, and at several points along the northeastern 

 coast of Siberia, and it frequents the Arctic coasts of Alaska in addition to being 

 found throughout the interior along streams where suitable flats occur. Mur- 

 doch notes it as a fall visitor at Point Barrow. It has been found in abundance 

 on the southeast coast of the Territory, where it occurs during the migrations. 



On the coast of British Columbia and farther south it is an 

 abundant fall migrant, but it is rare or casual inland; the first ar- 

 rivals sometimes reach California before the middle of July. Migra- 

 tion records for the great interior are almost entirely lacking and 

 how it reaches the Atlantic coast, where it is so abundant in, fall 

 and winter, is a mystery. 



Mr. Nichols wrote to me as follows : 



The occurrence of this bird on the North Atlantic coast of the United States 

 is irregular. At times it is really numerous on Long Island over periods of 

 several years, and then it becomes rare again. In the 1912 southward migra- 

 tion the western was carefully looked for among the abundant semipalmated 

 sandpiper but no evidence of its presence was found. In 1913 a single bird 

 with a very white head and a peculiar note suggesting a young robin was, 

 I now feel confident, a western sandpiper, at the time it passed as unidentified. 

 The following year one of the white-headed long-billed Juvenal westerns was 

 picked out in a flock of semipalmated in August and collected. Later several 

 others, all well-marked birds were identified in flocks of the semipalmated. 

 In 1916 and 1917 the species was still more numerous. On October 12, 1917, 

 at Long Beach with R. C. Murphy it was estimated that about one-half the 

 Ereunetcs were this, one-half the common eastern form. Specimens of each 

 were obtained from gunners present. The following year (1918) a flock on 

 the beach in late spring (June 2) were predominatingly western ; the species 

 returned again from the north in early July (July 4). During this or the 

 immediately succeeding southward migrations the semipalmated fell off in 

 numbers, and furthermore, a great many birds thought to be western were 

 indeterminate. Mr. E. P. Bicknell met the same condition which I found at 

 Mastic further west at Long Beach. I remember a letter wherein he spoke 

 of the semipalmated being replaced by the western, but I did not take just 

 that view of it. For a year or two I have no real idea how common either 

 species was. I saw numerous birds that seemed to be western, but mostly 

 indeterminate, and took no specimens. Later the standard semipalmated 

 reestablished its usually large numbers and this season (1925) probably for 

 the first time the western was again common among them, about as in 1916, 

 some of this latter form easily identifiable birds (in life). 



Winter— Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says: 



The western sandpiper is the most abundant of all the waders that winter 

 on this coast. It is not unusual to see thousands of these birds any day during 

 the winter months. It can almost be considered a permanent resident, as it 

 is only absent from May 20 until July 8. The adults arrive in worn breeding 

 plumage and immediately begin to moult the feathers of the head and throat. 

 By the first week in August they have acquired their autumn plumage. 



Among the big flocks of small sandpipers that we saw all winter 

 frequenting the extensive mud flats in the vicinity of Tampa Bay, 



