56 BULLETIN 146^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



ries and wide open grassy fields, where it once abounded in enormous 

 numbers. Excessive shooting for the market, where it was much in 

 demand, reduced its numbers to an alarmingly low ebb. Dr. Thomas 

 S. Roberts (1919) says that, in Minnesota, 



Fifty yeai'S ago it was present all through the summer, everywhere in open 

 country, in countless thousands. Now it is nearing extinction. Here and 

 there an occasional breeding pair may yet be found, but they are lonely 

 occupants of the places where their ancestors dwelt in vast numbers. 



And with the disappearing prairies have gone these and other 

 interesting birds that made the wide open places so attractive. When 

 I visited the Quill Lake region in Saskatchewan in 1917, I found 

 that practically all the prairies had been burned over or cultivated; 

 the long-billed curlew had entirely disappeared, though recently abun- 

 dant there, and I saw only one pair of chestnut-collared longspurs; 

 but some of the upland plover were adapting themselves to the new 

 conditions and were nesting in cultivated fields, much as the spotted 

 sandpipers and the killdeer have learned to nest in grain fields and 

 truck gardens. Perhaps such adaptation may be the salvation of a 

 useful and attractive species. Some observers report it as already 

 increasing in numbers. 



Spring. — W. H. Hudson (1922) describes the beginning of the 

 spring migration from the pampas of South America, as follows : 



The north migration as a rule begins about the 15th of February and con- 

 tinues to the 15th of March, and it is at the beginning of the former month 

 that the disquiet becomes noticeable. Now on one occasion the season of 

 unrest began much earlier, in the month of January, increased from day to 

 day and week to week in the most extraordinary way, and continued to about 

 the middle of March before the birds began to fly north, the migration con- 

 tinuing through March. On any day in February when out riding I would see 

 from time to time a bird spring up with its wild alarm cry and flight, and after 

 going a little distance drop down again. Then in a minute or two another, 

 farther away, would start up with its cry; and sitting still and watching and 

 listening, I could see the birds rise up here and there all over the plain — rise 

 with a cry, then settle down again ; and if one rode a 100 miles to any side 

 he would find it the same everywhere. The birds were in a continual state of 

 agitation, of fear; and though this state began so much sooner than usual, the 

 actual migration did not begin till a month later than the usual time. 



Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1926), writing from the same general 

 region, says: 



At Tucuman, Tucuman, five were heard early in the evening of April 1 as they 

 passed over the city traveling due north during a slow rain accompanied by 

 heavy mist. On the night of April 5 under similar conditions an extensive 

 flight of shore birds began at a quarter of 10 and continued until half past 11. 

 During this period J. L. Peters, with whom I was traveling at the time, and 

 I identified the call of the upland plover from 38 individuals. The birds were 

 in company with yellowlegs, solitary sandpipers, and a few golden plover. 



