28 BULLETIN 146; UI^riTED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



under protection. Maj. G. Ealph Meyer wrote to me in 1922 that 

 about 15 pairs bred on Cobb Island and 5 or 6 pairs on Hog Island 

 that year. It does not now breed in any numbers, so far as I know, 

 north of South Carolina, except in the Nova Scotia colonies. 



Although our check list does not recognize that fact, it has been 

 known for many years that willets breed regularly in southern Nova 

 Scotia, though during the early years of this century they came very 

 near being extirpated. Dr. Spencer Trotter (1904) recorded the 

 willet as " one of the most conspicuous inhabitants of the tidal 

 marshes " near Barrington, Shelburne County. But when I visited 

 that locality with him in July, 1907, we found only one pair. Evi- 

 dently they began to increase again after that under adequate pro- 

 tection. Harrison F. Lewis (1920) found them breeding in Yar- 

 mouth County, and Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1920(2) saw a flock 

 of 10 on July 18 and as many as 26 on July 25, 1920, near Barrington. 

 Later information from R. W. Tufts (1922 and 1925) shows a decided 

 increase up to 1922, when he estimated that there were 736 willets, 

 old and young, between Digby and Queens Counties ; but in 1923 and 

 1924 there seemed to be no further increase. 



Spring. — The northward migration of willets, which breed north 

 of the winter range, is along the Atlantic coast, starting in March. 

 The first migrants reach Virginia during the first or second week in 

 April, but do not appear in Massachusetts until May, the main flight 

 passing between the middle and last of that month. The probability 

 of an offshore migration route is suggested by the following interest- 

 ing observation made by Dr. George B. Grinnell (1916) during the 

 last days of May, 1907 : 



It was in the middle of the morning of a gray, but not foggy, day, when we 

 were off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, that I noticed a considerable 

 gathering of birds resting on the water in the immediate path of the ship. As 

 we approached them I thought they looked like shore birds, and as the vessel 

 drew quite close to them those immediately near it rose on wing and flew of£ to 

 right and left, and again alighted on the water among their fellows. In the 

 way in which they left the path of the vessel they reminded me of similar 

 flights of waterfowl seen in Alaska. When the birds took wing they were at 

 once recognized as willets, and there must have been somewhere near a thousand 

 of them, not all packed together in a dense clump on the water, but more or less 

 scattered out, in groups of forty, fifty, or a hundred, yet all fairly near one 

 another, and suggesting a single flock. They seemed to leave the water reluc- 

 tantly and gave me the impression that they were weary. 



Courtship. — Very little seems to have been recorded about the 

 courtship of the willet, but John T. Nichols has sent me the following 

 notes : 



On the shore of Wakulla County, Fla., in late March willets were evidently 

 about to nest, March 27 they were noticed chasing one another in air, and holding 

 the wings over the back after alighting, the black and white pattern displayed. 



