126 BULLETIN 146;, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



But this was not the last word from Nebraska, for 11 years later 

 Professor Swenk (1926) published the following encouraging note 

 of a sight record : 



In further substantiation of the undoubtable fact that the Eskimo curlew 

 is not yet extinct, I am now able to cite a positive instance of its occurrence 

 in Nebraska during the present spring. On the morning of April 8, 1926, Mr. 

 A. M. Brooking, of Hastings, an ornithologist and taxidermist who is very- 

 familiar with this species through having spent much effort in assembling 

 several specimens of it for his extensive collection, while driving from the 

 village of Inland to Hastings along what is known as the " north road," 

 saw a flock of eight birds alight in a newly plowed field about 4 miles east 

 of Hastings. He drove his car up close to the birds, and when within 40 

 yards of them M-as able to his astonishment to positively identify them as 

 unquestionably Eskimo curlews. Mr. Brooking knows the species so well, and 

 saw the birds so clearly, that in my opinion this sight record can be accepted 

 without hesitation. 



On the Labrador coast Eskimo curlews diminished rapidly in 

 numbers between 1870 and 1880. Hon. F. C. Berteau, a government 

 official in Labrador, in some notes published by W. J. Carroll (1910) 



says: 



Up to 1889 dough-birds or Eskimo curlew were very numerous in Labrador 

 from late in August to the end of September. They frequented the southern 

 part of the coast only, never appearing north of Indian Harbor at the northern 

 entrance to Hamilton Inlet. During the first 4 or 5 of the 10 years during 

 which I was collector of customs on Labrador, they were very numerous, 

 indeed, flying from the hills to the shore and vice versa in flocks numbering 

 from fifty to two or three hundred. During the last years of my collectorship 

 they gradually diminished in numbers, until in 1890 or thereabouts they entirely 

 disappeared, and save for a few seen on one or two occasions have never 

 returned to the coast. 



The Hudson Bay Co.'s people at Cartwright annually put up large numbers of 

 hermetically sealed tins for the use of the company's officials in London and 

 Montreal. I have seen as many as 2,000 birds hung up in their store as the 

 result of one day's shooting by some 25 or 30 guns. A fairly accurate idea of 

 the plentifulness of these birds will be obtained from an account of my own 

 experience. During the season I used to leave the cruiser at 6 a. m. and return 

 at 9 for breakfast. I do not remember ever getting less than 30 to 40 brace 

 during the two hours or so that I was shooting. 



Dr. Henry B. Bigelow (1902), who visited the northeast coast of 

 Labrador in 1900, heard of only about a dozen which were seen on 

 the coast that fall, of which he saw five. Dr. Charles W. Townsend 

 (1913) reported that seven were "shot and one other seen on the 

 beach at West Bay, north of Cartwright, in August and September, 

 1912. The sldns of five were saved, and sent to Cambridge, where 

 they were seen and identified by Mr. William Brewster." 



Excessive shooting of this curlew on its migrations and in its winter 

 home in South America was doubtless one of the chief causes of its 



