HUDSONIAN CUKLEW 117 



swale or low place in the tundra, in which the clumps of grass or moss were 

 often surrounded at their bases with water. The nests were in no way pro- 

 tected, the eggs always being in plain view, but the remarkable mimicry in 

 their coloration is generally of sufficient protection. 



MacFarlane collected some 13 sets of eggs on the barren grounds 

 west of the lower Anderson Eiver, but I find only one nest described 

 in his notes ; this he said was " a depression in the ground, lined 

 with a few decayed leaves." Stanton Warburton, Jr. took a set of 

 three eggs near Teller, Alaska, on July 4^ 1924 ; he writes to me that 

 " the nest was situated on hard, dry tundra, the eggs occupying a 

 slight depression in light grasses; distinctive nesting material of 

 grey lichen-light material covered the cavity. Both birds were 

 present." A nest found by Bishop J. O. Stringer on an island in the 

 lower Mackenzie River is described as a pile of grass, moss, and 

 weeds. 



Eggs. — The Hudsonian curlew lays almost invariably four eggs, 

 though the set of three referred to above was heavily incubated. 

 The eggs are hardly, if at all, distinguishable from those of the 

 European whimbrel. They are ovate pyriform, rather pointed, in 

 shape and show little or no gloss. Doctor Grinnell (1900) describes 

 them as follows: 



Their ground color is very variable, from a bluish pea green through olive 

 buff to light olive green. The markings are numerous and somewhat amassed 

 at the larger ends of the eggs. They consist of dots, spots, and blotches of 

 pale lavender, drab. Front's brown, and bistre. The latter seems in every 

 case (he real pigment, and the varying depth to which it is covered with 

 subsequent layers of shell material, seems to account for the different tints, 

 oven to the palest lavender. 



In the few sets that I have seen the prevailing ground colors are 

 dark and light shades of "olive buff," with occasionally "Isabella 

 color " or " ecru olive." In the markings I recognized various browns, 

 such as " bone brown," " warm sepia," " Saccardo's umber," " olive 

 brown," and " buffy brown." The measurements of 37 eggs average 

 57.5 by 40.7 millimeters ; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 

 61.9 by 41.7, 59.2 by 43.2, 52 by 38.5, and 55 by 37.2 miUimeters. 



Plumages. — I have never seen a downy young Hudsonian curlew, 

 and, so far as I know, it has never been described. Young birds are 

 in Juvenal plumage when they reach us on migration. They are more 

 easily recognized by their much shorter bills than by any plumage 

 differences, as they look much like adults. The markings on the neck 

 and breast are finer and closer; the feathers of the back, scapulars, 

 tertials, and wing coverts are "warm sepia," notched with cream- 

 white or pale buff, producing a spotted effect, most pronounced on the 

 wing coverts and tertials (in adults these parts are more narrowly 

 edged with buff) ; the rump is " sepia," with large spots of "pinkish 



