AMERICAN GOLDEN PLOVER 177 



golden plover has apparently resumed its migratory visits to eastern 

 Ontario." Prof. William Eowan (1923) says: 



This year has been an exceptional golden-plover year. At the place re- 

 ferred to above, somewhere over a thousand birds were seen on the 20th of 

 May alone, in moving flocks varying in number from 30 individuals to several 

 hundreds. This was evidently not unique; for about the same time I got a 

 report from quite another part of the Province that this species was unusually 

 abundant, while from yet another quarter I got a very good description of 

 tlie bird in a letter with a request that I name it for the inquirer, a careful 

 bird observer. Her comment was that she had never seen the species before, 

 but that it was, at the time of writing, present on the plowed fields in enor- 

 mous numbers. 



And John T. Nichols tells me that " of recent years there has been 

 a distinct increase " on Long Island. If shooting conditions in its 

 winter home could be controlled, its future would be assured. 



Spring. — From its winter home on the pampas of Argentina and 

 Uruguay the golden plover starts early on its long northward migra- 

 tion. Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1926) noted that — 



The northward migration began with a flock of nine seen January 23, 1921, 

 at a little fresh-water pool on the beach near La Paloma, Uruguay ; when flushed 

 these passed on to the west. Single individuals were seen near San Vicente, Uru- 

 guay, in flight toward the northwest on January 24 and 30. At Lazcano, Uruguay, 

 birds in passage north were seen in early morning on February 7 and 8, and 

 one was recorded February 18 at Rio Negro, Uruguay. On March 8 at Guamini, 

 Buenos Aires, 15 came in at dusk to roost on a little mud bar in company 

 with Hudsonian godwits. The migration seemed almost at an end then, as 

 later I saw only four at Tunuyan, Mendoza, on March 23; and on April 5 

 only a few were heard calling with other shore birds in flight northward over 

 Tucuman, Tucuman. 



The exact route followed through the interior of South xA^merica 

 is not definitely known, but it is not known to migrate along either 

 coast of that continent. Austin H. Clark (1905) has advanced the 

 theory that it prefers to fly with a beam wind and that it selects the 

 route over which the prevailing winds will produce this condition. 

 He suggests the following as the probable route : 



In returning the birds would first go north (across the prevailing westerlies) 

 until in the vicinity of Buenos Aires and the country just to the west of it, 

 where they would encoi^nter northeasterly winds, which would turn them 

 inland, up the valley of the La Plata and along the plains to the east of the 

 Andes, the course gradually becoming more northerly, and then northeasterly 

 in the area covered by the southeast trades. They would reach the Amazon 

 Valley in its western half, and then under the guidance of the northeast trades 

 fly northwest toward the Isthmus of Panama- and Central America. The 

 course from here would be northwest across the trades to Texas and the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley. The birds follow up this valley northward and then, on 

 reaching Canada, fly northwest across the prevailing southwesterly and westerly 

 winds to their breeding grounds in western Arctic America. 



