ESKIMO CURLEW 129 



average 51.3 by 35.5 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes 

 measure 54.5 by 36, 52 by 39.5, 47.5 by 36, and 51 by 33 millimeters. 



Plumages. — -There are not enough specimens of Eskimo curlews, 

 collected during the proper seasons, to work out the molts and plum- 

 ages satisfactorily. There are no specimens of downy young or very 

 young juvenals available. Young birds in juvenal plumage, as seen 

 on migration, are much like adults, but the feathers of the mantle, 

 scapulars, tertials, and wing coverts are more broadly edged, but 

 less conspicuously notched, with " pinkish buff " ; and the under parts 

 are less extensively covered with the dusky markings. 



The postnuptial molt of adults is mainly accomplished after they 

 have left us in the fall, beginning in September; the wings are 

 probably molted after the birds have reached their winter home. 

 There is a prenuptial molt of the body plumage, visible during 

 the spring migration, the new feathers, being more pinkish buff, 

 especially on the under parts. 



Food. — Professor Swenk (1915) says of its food habits in the 

 west : 



The Eskimo curlew was a bird of such food habits that it is a distinct loss 

 to our agriculture that it should have disappeared. During the invasion of 

 the Rocky Mountain grasshopper {Melarwplus spretus) it did splendid work 

 in the destruction of grasshoppers and their eggs. Mr. Wheeler states that 

 in the latter seventies these birds would congregate on pieces of land which 

 had not been plowed and where the grasshopper eggs were laid, reach down 

 into the soil with their long bills, and drag out the egg capsules, which they 

 would then devour with their contents of eggs or young hoppers until the 

 land had been cleared of the pests. A specimen examined by Aughey in 

 3874 had 31 grasshoppers in its stomach, together with a large number of 

 small berries of some kind. The bird in its migrations often alighted on 

 plowed ground to feed on the white grubs and cutworms turned up by the 

 plow, or in meadow lands, probably feeding on ants in the latter situation. 

 Richardson records finding them feeding on large ants at Fort Franklin in 

 late May, 1849. The curlews were rarely seen near water, but were upland 

 l)irds almost exclusively during the spring migration over the Great Plains 

 region. 



Doctor Coues (1874) describes its food on the Labrador coast, as 

 follows : 



Their food consists almost entirely of the crowberry {Empetrum nigrum), 

 which grows on all the hillsides in astonishing profusion. It is also called the 

 " bearberry " and " curlew berry." It is a small berry, of a deep piirple color, 

 almost black, growing upon a procumbent, running kind of heath, the foliage 

 of which has a peculiar moss-like appearance. This is their principal and 

 favorite food and the whole intestine, the vent, the legs, the bill, throat, and 

 even the plumage, are more or less stained with the deep purple juice. They 

 are also very fond of a species of small snail that adheres to the rock in 

 immense quantities, to procure which they frequent the land-washes at low 

 tide. Food being so abundant, and so easily obtained, they become excessively 



