AMERICAlsr GOLDEIT PLOVER 185 



The above quotation and the fact that William Brewster (1925) 

 recorded the golden plover as visiting the Umbagog Lake region in 

 Maine "regularly and rather plentifully not so many years ago," 

 suggests the idea that some of the birds we used to see in New Eng- 

 land came by an overland route. However, our big flights were 

 probably birds that came in from the sea under stress of bad weather, 

 either before or during easterly storms accompanied by heavy rains 

 or thick fog. According to Mr. Mackay's (1891) records, covering a 

 period of 32 years from 1858 to 1890, the last week in August seems 

 to be the best time to look for a flight, though he says " it is unusual 

 to see any but scattering birds before the 10th of September." My 

 earliest record for adult birds is August 9; practically all the birds 

 which come in August are adults. The young birds come in Sep- 

 tember ; my latest date is October 7. The appearance of either adults 

 or young on our coast has alwaj^s been very uncertain and irregular, 

 dependent on the necessary weather conditions coming at the proper 

 time. 



Mr. Mackay (1891) says: 



While I have continually shot the young birds on Nantucket, and in other 

 parts of Massachusetts, their arrival is a much more uncertain event than that 

 of the older birds, there being some years when I have seen none, and others 

 only a few. I have never known a year when they were anything like as numer- 

 ous as I have seen the older birds. 



During some years large flocks of golden plover pass over the 

 Bermudas in September and October, according to Capt. Savile G. 

 Reid (1884), "but, unless in stormy weather, they do not alight in 

 any great numbers. Numbers appeared in September, 1874, fre- 

 quenting the grassy slopes of the north shore — their favorite haunt — 

 and even the parade grounds, during the continuance of a three day's 

 revolving gale." 



Col. H. W. Feilden (1889) writing of conditions in Barbados, the 

 easternmost of the West Indies, says : 



Stragglers arrive as early as July and the beginning of August, but the main 

 flights come with the first heavy weather after the 27th of August, and long 

 experience and observation proves that this date is kept year after year w^ith 

 wonderful accuracy. The course of all the migratory Charadriidae across 

 Barbados in the autumn is from the northwest to southeast, and if the wind 

 blows from southeast the birds are brought down to the island, for it appears 

 to be a tolerably well established observation that birds prefer migrating with 

 a " beam " wind. A shift of wind from the northeast, with squally weather to 

 the southeast, is ardently longed for by the Barbados sportsmen toward the 

 end of August, as this forces the migratory hosts to alight instead of passing 

 over at a great height, as they are seen to do when the wind is from the north- 

 east. The first arrivals of this species are invariably black-breasted birds, show- 

 ing that the old birds precede the young, and the first comers are nearly all 

 males. The young birds without black on the breast appear about the 12th of 



