34 BULLETIN 146, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



shot all through the breeding season. Being a large, fat bird, it 

 helped to fill the game bag rapidly and so was a favorite with sports- 

 men or market gunners. It does not come readily to decoys, but it 

 can easily be attracted by a skillful imitation of its notes, and flocks 

 often fly by within range of the gunner's blind. ^Ir. Nichols tells 

 me that it will decoy well to the whistled imitation of the black- 

 bellied plover's note. As it is no longer on the game-bird list, it will 

 probably be given a chance to increase. 



Some colonies have been washed out by high tides and their 

 natural enemies, predatory animals and birds, have done consider- 

 able damage. P. B. Philipp (1910), who visited Raccoon Key, S. C, 

 says: 



The birds had been badly persecuted by fish crows and minks; broken and 

 sucked eggs were found everywhere, and two nests were found in which the 

 skeleton of the bird was lying on sucked eggs, the work of minks. 



Field marks. — The willet, while standing on the ground, is a 

 nondescript looking bird, almost devoid of characteristic markings, 

 especially in the immature and winter plumages. It is about the 

 size of the greater yellowlegs, but more heavily built, with shorter 

 and heavier, bluish-gray legs, shorter neck, and decidedly heavier' 

 bill. Its drab colors match well into a background of sand or mud. 

 But when it lifts its black and white wings or when flying, no bird 

 is more easilj^ recognized, for its color pattern is unique and con- 

 spicuous; the black wings, with their broad white band extending 

 across the base of the tail, advertise the willet as far as they can be 

 seen. Its notes, described above, are also quite characteristic. 



Fall. — I imagine that the willets, which breed in Nova Scotia, mi- 

 grate at sea to the West Indies, mainly in August. I have never seen 

 an adult willet on the New England coast in the fall, and practically 

 all that I have shot are referable to the western form, but it is not 

 easy to recognize the two forms in immature plumage. Willets of 

 some form, in immature plumage, are quite common at times in 

 southern New England and on Long Island from the middle of July 

 to the middle of September. The main flight comes in August. I 

 suspect that these are practially all young western willets. 



Winter. — The eastern willet spends the winter on the south Atlantic 

 and Gulf coasts of North America, in the Bahamas and West Indies, 

 and on the more northern coasts of Soutli America.- It is therefore 

 resident or present the year round in much of its breeding range. It 

 is rather rare as far north as South Carolina, but abundant in Florida 

 and on the Gulf coasts, where the resident birds are reinforced by 

 eastern and western willets from the North. In Florida they are occa- 

 sionally seen about the ponds on the prairies or in the pine woods, 

 but their favorite resorts are the broad mud flats in the estuaries and 



