142 BULLETIN 146^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Food. — Probably the feeding habits of this curlew are not very- 

 different from those of the Hudsonian curlew, but the only food 

 mentioned by observers consists of berries. Birds collected in Alaska 

 were feeding on blueberries. They are said to feed on Canthium 

 berries in the Hawaiian Islands; and birds shot on Midway Island 

 by Dr. Paul Bartsch (1922) were "crammed full of Scaevola berries." 



Behavior. — Doctor Bartsch (1922) found this bird "quite abundant 

 on both" Midway Islands in November, "where in company with 

 the golden plover it frequents all parts of the island excepting those 

 covered by brush. These birds were quite tame as well as curious 

 and when flushed would frequently fly about us, emitting their 

 peculiar cry." 



Dill and Bryan (1912) reported about 250 on Laysan Island in 

 the spring ; they say : 



Just before sunset and early in the morning the bristle-thighed curlews 

 would come up around our camp uttering their peculiar complaining notes. 

 They roosted on the roofs of the old buildings at night, sometimes as many as 

 20 birds in one flock. We saw them feeding on different parts of the island but 

 usually about the lagoon or along the beaches. 



Donald R. Dickey photograj)hed a bristle-thighed curlew on Laysan 

 Island in the act of robbing a, nest of the man-o-war bird, of which 

 he tells me : 



This was not a sporadic bit of deviltry engaged in by one perverted individual. 

 Instead, it was characteristic of most, if not all, of the curlews present on 

 Laysan at the time we were there. In other words, they indulged in organized 

 banditry, working about the island in troups accompanied by numbers of 

 turnstones and an occasional golden plover which were partners in crime with 

 the curlew. The turnstones jammed their bills straight into the lighter-shelled 

 eggs, but the curlew, frequently at least, got access to the contents of the 

 larger eggs by raising them in their bills and then dropping them back on the 

 hard sand until they broke. They can pick up and run away with an egg up to 

 the size of a man-o-war bird's egg. In the case of the latter, the more dex- 

 terous birds seized the egg and held it endwise in the bill. It seems difficult 

 for them to pick it up otherwise. 



Dr. Alexander Wetmore has sent me the following notes on this 

 subject : 



That a bird of the shore-bird family should destroy eggs may seem almost 

 unbelievable in view of the habits ordinary in this group, yet in work in the 

 Hawaiian Bird Reservation in 1923 we found the bristle-thighed curlew, as well 

 as the turnstone, making regular practice of eating the eggs of the birds nesting 

 on these distant islands. The sooty and ^ay-backed terns were the greatest 

 sufferers, as the curlew drove their long bills through the eggs with ease, or 

 seized them in their long mandibles to carry them away and eat them at their 

 leisure. On dose observation we found that curlews attacked the eggs of all 

 birds indiscriminately, even pulling an egg from beneath a frigate bird when the 

 incubating bird raised on the nest for a moment, the theft being committed 

 so adroitly that the egg seemingly was not missed. Mr. Donald Dickey in his 



