286 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



on July 11 and 27, 1904, and that young birds appear about a month 

 later, as he has specimens taken August 10 and 19, 1904. 



Evidently the godwits move off their breeding grounds as soon as 

 the young are able to fly, those birds which have been unsuccessful 

 in rearing their young being the first to leave, and forming the van- 

 guard of the early migration in July. Probably most of the adults 

 start on their southward migration before the end of July, and well 

 in advance of the young, the later flight being composed almost 

 entirely of young birds, and moving more deliberately. 



The fall migration is or was very well marked and rather unique ; 

 many individuals formerly migrated almost due east from their 

 breeding grounds in the interior to the Atlantic coast of New Eng- 

 land. Others still continue to migrate westward to the Pacific coast 

 and southward to the Gulf coast. All of the earlier writers indicate 

 that this was an abundant migrant on the Atlantic coast from New 

 England southward about the middle of the last century. The 

 immense flocks which passed along our shores have been gradually 

 disappearing until now only a few straggling birds are ever seen. 

 Probably what comparatively few birds are left migrate to the Atlan- 

 tic coast farther south or to the Gulf or Pacific coasts. Probably 

 excessive shooting has driven them from their former haunts. They 

 have always been popular with sportsmen and have been slaughtered 

 unmercifully. They share with some other species the fatal habit, 

 prompted by sympathy or curiosity, of circling back again and again 

 over their fallen companions after a flock has been shot into, so 

 that is is an easy matter for the gunners to kill them in large numbers. 



Although it breeds and lives on the grassy meadows of the interior, 

 the marbled godwit seems to prefer the seacoast on its migrations, 

 frequenting more rarely the shores of large lakes. It is common as 

 a migrant on the Pacific coast even as late as December, but it seems 

 to be absent from California in January and February. Bradford 

 Torrey (1913) says: 



I have seen godwits and willets together lining the grassy edge of the flats 

 for a long distance, and so densely massed that I mistook them at first for a 

 border of some kind of herbage. Thousands there must have been ; and when 

 they rose at my approach, they made something like a cloud ; gray birds and 

 brown birds so contrasted in color as to be discriminated beyond risk of error, 

 even when too far away for the staring white wing patches of the willets to be 

 longer discernible. 



As a flock there was no getting near them ; I proved the fact to my dissatis- 

 faction more than once; but sitting quietly on the same bay shore I have re- 

 peatedly known a single godwit or willet to feed carelessly past me within the 

 distance of a rod or two. 



Winter. — It is a comparatively short journey for this godwit to its 

 winter home in the Gulf States and Central America. I have seen 

 and collected a few godwits in Florida, but it is now impossible to 



